Admiral Mary Catherine MacAllister swept through Gateway Station's CommuniCore, balancing an armload of PADDs, two tricorders, and a rather large ("deuterium-tanker sized," as Ensign Lynch put it) mug of Slurm with all the grace and poise of a prima ballerina. Biometric sensors opened her office door, raised the lights while activating the sound system (Camille Saint-Saens, at an appropriately low 'background noise' volume), and closed the door behind her.
The door which muted the loud, frustrated sigh that Adm. MacAllister let out as she looked-while-trying-not-to-look at her office. It looks like a plasma conduit blew in here, said a voice in her head that sounded disturbingly like her mother. Adm. MacAllister unceremoniously dumped the PADDs and tricorders onto the couch, adding to but miraculously not destabilizing the pile already there. At least her mug's usual resting spot on her desk was PADD-free. She sat back into her well-worn chair and sighed again. It was going to be a long day. Taking a long pull from her mug, she reached for the nearest stack of PADDs and started in on the 'paperwork'.
Before too long, the door chime sounded its annoyingly peppy four-tone and Ensign Lynch stepped in, bearing yet more PADDs. Adm. MacAllister gave him an 'anywhere there's room' gesture. He leaned over the couch and deftly rearranged the pile, adding the PADDs he'd brought with him. Pausing for a moment to scratch his head, Ensign Lynch pulled five PADDs from the couch and walked over to Adm. MacAllister's desk. She set down the PADD she'd been working on and took the ones from Ensign Lynch's hand.
"The slipstream comm buoys are down," he started.
"Again?" The question was rhetorical; the buoy tech was still new and seemed to have more than its fair share of bugs.
Ensign Lynch's shoulders raised slightly in his 'what are you going to do?' shrug before he continued. "We received a data-torp through the Corridor late last night." He pointed at the red and silver PADDs on the top of the stack he'd handed to the Admiral. "Tech data and new orders."
Adm. MacAllister glanced at the red PADD's technical data before turning her attention to the silver one. After a couple of minutes, her eyes lit up and a crooked smile crossed her face. Ensign Lynch had never seen that particular smile, and he found it disturbing.
Still smiling, Adm. MacAllister gave the silver PADD back to Ensign Lynch. "Give this one to Frost."
"Begging the Admiral's pardon," replied Ensign Lynch, "but Challenger is overdue for ion flash-purging of her torpedo launchers as well as several software upgrades."
"I am aware of that," Adm. MacAllister snapped. "Inform Capt. Frost that he has until the Coventry arrives, then I expect the Challenger to be ready to go."
"Aye, Admiral."
"Anything else, Ensign?"
"Yes ma'am. The blue PADD, message from Fleet Admiral Durham." Adm. MacAllister shuffled the PADDs in her hand like playing cards and accessed the blue PADD. The crooked smile returned, wider than before, and Adm. MacAllister laughed harshly.
"What is it, Admiral?"
"Rope, Ensign. Hopefully, just enough rope..." She re-read the blue PADD. "Dismissed." Ensign Lynch nodded and left the office, hurrying into the CommuniCore to transmit the orders to Challenger.
* * * * * * * * * * * * *
"Gateway control, this is Challenger shuttle Aquilonia, requesting approach vector and docking clearance."
"One moment.. Aquilonia, you are cleared on approach vector four-alpha-two, docking bay 94. Welcome back, Traveller."
Gabriel winced at the honorific, and Connie smiled to herself, knowing Gabriel was still coming to terms with his prophesied place in Celvani legend. After learning what the Gift of Five meant, he'd been unusually touchy on the subject.
"Copy, Gateway control," Gabriel replied. "Proceeding on assigned vector." He input the flight path into the shuttle's controls, and bumped their speed up just a touch.
"We're not going to Challenger?" asked Connie.
"Not right away. My shipment of Piscean crystalfruit arrived last night, and you simply cannot send crystalfruit through the transporter. Oh, and Adm. MacAllister wants to see us."
Connie had to chuckle at the implication that the Admiral rated lower than a pallet of fruit in Gabriel's mind. As the shuttle passed Draelos, Celvanos IV's third moon, the massive spaceborne sculpture of Gateway Station came into view. Connie could just barely make out Challenger's sleek lines as she rested in Bay 13, and in Bay 9, the perpetually-under-repair USS Kingfisher came into view. But next to her, in Bay 8...
Connie pointed at the station. "Look, in Bay 8, is that..?"
"Gods above and gods below," Gabriel cursed sotto voce. "Yes, yes it is. USS Coventry, Captain John 'Mad Jack' Perceval, master and commander. And yes, the ship is the class you think it is. He had it stripped to the keel and rebuilt per his exact specifications."
"You know Capt. Perceval? I've never had the pleasure of meeting him."
"The pleasure would be all his, rest assured. Egomaniacal bastard."
Connie had to laugh, though it drew a dark glare from Gabriel. "Is there anyone in Starfleet you get along with?"
* * * * * * * * * * * * *
After securing the crystalfruit in the Aquilonia's hold, Gabriel and Connie proceeded to the briefing room on deck 17. "Adm. MacAllister's favorite," Gabriel told Connie in the turbolift on the way up, "because you can't see Celvanos."
"Ah."
They arrived at the briefing room to find Adm. MacAllister laughing at something Capt. Perceval had said. Her smile turned cold as Gabriel and Connie entered.
"You're late," the Admiral said, her voice hard.
"Ask me if I care," Gabriel retorted. Connie gasped at Gabriel's undisguised irritation. Obviously, the appearance of Capt. Perceval has really gotten under his skin, she thought. I'll have to find out why.. if Gabriel doesn't get busted back to ensign for insubordination first.
Capt. Perceval stood up and turned to face Gabriel and Connie, settling between them and Adm MacAllister in an attempt to diffuse the tension. He held out his hand to Connie.
"Captain John Perceval, commanding USS Coventry," he said with a disarmingly brilliant smile. He was broad-shouldered and well-built, with a crop of void-black hair and piercing green eyes. His grip was firm and confident, and his voice carried a time-softened but still noticeable Cape Cod accent. Connie actually felt herself blushing. Damn, he's good-looking...
"Commander Constance Taylor, XO USS Challenger," she replied. John said something to her in Japanese, and she blushed again.
"Good to see you again, Gabriel," John said, turning (most of) his attention away from Connie.
"Get bent."
"Captain Frost!" barked Adm. MacAllister.
"Captain?" laughed John lightly. "Who lost their grip on any semblance of reality and made you a captain?"
A deep tenor voice rumbled out of the doorway in response. "I did, Capt. Perceval." They all turned to see Fleet Admiral Robert Durham step into the briefing room. "And Capt. Frost, you will show respect to your fellow and superior officers."
"On your word, sir."
"Thank you." He nodded to Adm. MacAllister. "If I may?"
"By all means, sir," she replied, activating the briefing room's display systems.
"The Coventry and the Challenger have been selected to participate in a series of wargames," said Adm. Durham. "But with a twist." He called up a set of technical schematics on the main screen, identical to those on the red PADD that Adm. MacAllister had reviewed earlier in her office.
"R&D has been working on a new weapons system, the Ionostatic Pulse Emitter, or 'ion torpedo'. As Capt. Frost worked on the project's initial stages, perhaps you'd like to elaborate further?"
"Sir. It's not a physical torpedo, not like a photorp, rather it's a burst of ionostatic energy; the pulse just happens to resemble a torpedo. Since calling it the IPE drew too many childish laughs, we called it the ion torpedo for ease and convenience.
"It's designed to cut through shields and disable an opponent vessel's primary systems without causing any major damage to the ship itself. Basically..."
"A 'stun setting' for ships," Capt. Perceval interrupted.
"More or less," said Gabriel coolly. "Ideally, the ion pulse would be used before phasers or photorps, diffusing a hostile situation before it can escalate." He turned to Adm. Durham. "I thought they were still having difficulties with fabrication of the focusing coils."
"They are. Your ships will be fitted with an array designed to simulate the pulse emitter, as well as software to simulate the effects of a pulse strike. It's as close to a live-fire exercise as we can manage right now, but the techs at R&D want the data from the test to do some fine-tuning." He looked over at Gabriel. "You know how engineers can be."
Gabriel ignored the jab and sat back down next to Connie. Adm. Durham handed each captain a PADD. "Each ship will also have one or two special systems installed -- simulated, like the ion pulse -- that your opponent will not know about. You have eight standard hours to make the necessary arrangements, then you will deploy to the Gar'ros system. Adm. MacAllister and I will observe from my ship, under cloak.
"Any questions?" Gabriel and John both shook their heads 'no'. "Excellent. I look forward to seeing you both in action. Dismissed."
"Aye, sir," said John crisply.
"On your word, sir," Gabriel replied.
* * * * * * * * * * * * *
"Come in," said Gabriel, in response to the ready room's door chime. Connie stepped in, her sleeves rolled up and a smudge of injector lubricant on her forehead. She handed Gabriel a large PADD.
"All systems and software necessary for the exercise have been installed," Connie said. "We're, um, 'ready to rock'."
"Two hours ahead of schedule," Gabriel noted proudly. "Well done, Commander." Gabriel noticed a hesitant look on Connie's face. He sighed. "But..."
"Coventry left an hour and a half ago."
"Of course she did." Gabriel slammed the PADD down on his desk in disgust.
"If I may, Captain," said Connie, "you've been rather, ah, cranky since we saw the Coventry at dock." She didn't have to complete the thought; Gabriel could imagine well enough what was on her mind. He indicated the seat opposite his and leaned heavily on his desk.
"It was my freshman year at the Academy, and Jack's senior year. Each year he'd been a cadet, Jack picked some unlucky cadet to be his 'special friend'."
"Ah."
"He made my life a living hell that year, never once offering even a weak attempt at explaining why. I tried to get help from a professor, any professor, but he was 'Mad Jack' Perceval, and what Mad Jack wants, Mad Jack gets."
"Including having Academy faculty look the other way?"
Gabriel nodded. "I spent hours just trying to hide from him, for all the good it did. You can't imagine how happy I was when he graduated -- valedictorian, of course."
"Didn't he actually beat the Kobayashi Maru sim?"
"Depends on who you ask. The sim did beat him, though he had it going for about fifteen minutes, and he gave one of the three simulator mainframes -- Balthasar, as I recall -- the computer equivalent of an aneurism. They had to scrub it down to the piezo-atomic level and reinstall the software. Took four months."
"And today's the first time you've seen him since?"
Gabriel snorted. "I wish. He was XO on the Ali ben Akeem when Durham was the captain. I was a lieutenant j.g. in engineering. Apparently 'friendship' with Jack is a lifetime honor.
"No sense in delaying the inevitable," said Gabriel as he stood and headed for the bridge. "But we do have 'home field advantage', that should win us a round or two. Take a moment to freshen up, Commander, and then set your course for the Gar'ros system, warp 6."
"Set my course for the Gar'ros system, warp 6 aye."
* * * * * * * * * * * * *
The door which muted the loud, frustrated sigh that Adm. MacAllister let out as she looked-while-trying-not-to-look at her office. It looks like a plasma conduit blew in here, said a voice in her head that sounded disturbingly like her mother. Adm. MacAllister unceremoniously dumped the PADDs and tricorders onto the couch, adding to but miraculously not destabilizing the pile already there. At least her mug's usual resting spot on her desk was PADD-free. She sat back into her well-worn chair and sighed again. It was going to be a long day. Taking a long pull from her mug, she reached for the nearest stack of PADDs and started in on the 'paperwork'.
Before too long, the door chime sounded its annoyingly peppy four-tone and Ensign Lynch stepped in, bearing yet more PADDs. Adm. MacAllister gave him an 'anywhere there's room' gesture. He leaned over the couch and deftly rearranged the pile, adding the PADDs he'd brought with him. Pausing for a moment to scratch his head, Ensign Lynch pulled five PADDs from the couch and walked over to Adm. MacAllister's desk. She set down the PADD she'd been working on and took the ones from Ensign Lynch's hand.
"The slipstream comm buoys are down," he started.
"Again?" The question was rhetorical; the buoy tech was still new and seemed to have more than its fair share of bugs.
Ensign Lynch's shoulders raised slightly in his 'what are you going to do?' shrug before he continued. "We received a data-torp through the Corridor late last night." He pointed at the red and silver PADDs on the top of the stack he'd handed to the Admiral. "Tech data and new orders."
Adm. MacAllister glanced at the red PADD's technical data before turning her attention to the silver one. After a couple of minutes, her eyes lit up and a crooked smile crossed her face. Ensign Lynch had never seen that particular smile, and he found it disturbing.
Still smiling, Adm. MacAllister gave the silver PADD back to Ensign Lynch. "Give this one to Frost."
"Begging the Admiral's pardon," replied Ensign Lynch, "but Challenger is overdue for ion flash-purging of her torpedo launchers as well as several software upgrades."
"I am aware of that," Adm. MacAllister snapped. "Inform Capt. Frost that he has until the Coventry arrives, then I expect the Challenger to be ready to go."
"Aye, Admiral."
"Anything else, Ensign?"
"Yes ma'am. The blue PADD, message from Fleet Admiral Durham." Adm. MacAllister shuffled the PADDs in her hand like playing cards and accessed the blue PADD. The crooked smile returned, wider than before, and Adm. MacAllister laughed harshly.
"What is it, Admiral?"
"Rope, Ensign. Hopefully, just enough rope..." She re-read the blue PADD. "Dismissed." Ensign Lynch nodded and left the office, hurrying into the CommuniCore to transmit the orders to Challenger.
* * * * * * * * * * * * *
"Gateway control, this is Challenger shuttle Aquilonia, requesting approach vector and docking clearance."
"One moment.. Aquilonia, you are cleared on approach vector four-alpha-two, docking bay 94. Welcome back, Traveller."
Gabriel winced at the honorific, and Connie smiled to herself, knowing Gabriel was still coming to terms with his prophesied place in Celvani legend. After learning what the Gift of Five meant, he'd been unusually touchy on the subject.
"Copy, Gateway control," Gabriel replied. "Proceeding on assigned vector." He input the flight path into the shuttle's controls, and bumped their speed up just a touch.
"We're not going to Challenger?" asked Connie.
"Not right away. My shipment of Piscean crystalfruit arrived last night, and you simply cannot send crystalfruit through the transporter. Oh, and Adm. MacAllister wants to see us."
Connie had to chuckle at the implication that the Admiral rated lower than a pallet of fruit in Gabriel's mind. As the shuttle passed Draelos, Celvanos IV's third moon, the massive spaceborne sculpture of Gateway Station came into view. Connie could just barely make out Challenger's sleek lines as she rested in Bay 13, and in Bay 9, the perpetually-under-repair USS Kingfisher came into view. But next to her, in Bay 8...
Connie pointed at the station. "Look, in Bay 8, is that..?"
"Gods above and gods below," Gabriel cursed sotto voce. "Yes, yes it is. USS Coventry, Captain John 'Mad Jack' Perceval, master and commander. And yes, the ship is the class you think it is. He had it stripped to the keel and rebuilt per his exact specifications."
"You know Capt. Perceval? I've never had the pleasure of meeting him."
"The pleasure would be all his, rest assured. Egomaniacal bastard."
Connie had to laugh, though it drew a dark glare from Gabriel. "Is there anyone in Starfleet you get along with?"
* * * * * * * * * * * * *
After securing the crystalfruit in the Aquilonia's hold, Gabriel and Connie proceeded to the briefing room on deck 17. "Adm. MacAllister's favorite," Gabriel told Connie in the turbolift on the way up, "because you can't see Celvanos."
"Ah."
They arrived at the briefing room to find Adm. MacAllister laughing at something Capt. Perceval had said. Her smile turned cold as Gabriel and Connie entered.
"You're late," the Admiral said, her voice hard.
"Ask me if I care," Gabriel retorted. Connie gasped at Gabriel's undisguised irritation. Obviously, the appearance of Capt. Perceval has really gotten under his skin, she thought. I'll have to find out why.. if Gabriel doesn't get busted back to ensign for insubordination first.
Capt. Perceval stood up and turned to face Gabriel and Connie, settling between them and Adm MacAllister in an attempt to diffuse the tension. He held out his hand to Connie.
"Captain John Perceval, commanding USS Coventry," he said with a disarmingly brilliant smile. He was broad-shouldered and well-built, with a crop of void-black hair and piercing green eyes. His grip was firm and confident, and his voice carried a time-softened but still noticeable Cape Cod accent. Connie actually felt herself blushing. Damn, he's good-looking...
"Commander Constance Taylor, XO USS Challenger," she replied. John said something to her in Japanese, and she blushed again.
"Good to see you again, Gabriel," John said, turning (most of) his attention away from Connie.
"Get bent."
"Captain Frost!" barked Adm. MacAllister.
"Captain?" laughed John lightly. "Who lost their grip on any semblance of reality and made you a captain?"
A deep tenor voice rumbled out of the doorway in response. "I did, Capt. Perceval." They all turned to see Fleet Admiral Robert Durham step into the briefing room. "And Capt. Frost, you will show respect to your fellow and superior officers."
"On your word, sir."
"Thank you." He nodded to Adm. MacAllister. "If I may?"
"By all means, sir," she replied, activating the briefing room's display systems.
"The Coventry and the Challenger have been selected to participate in a series of wargames," said Adm. Durham. "But with a twist." He called up a set of technical schematics on the main screen, identical to those on the red PADD that Adm. MacAllister had reviewed earlier in her office.
"R&D has been working on a new weapons system, the Ionostatic Pulse Emitter, or 'ion torpedo'. As Capt. Frost worked on the project's initial stages, perhaps you'd like to elaborate further?"
"Sir. It's not a physical torpedo, not like a photorp, rather it's a burst of ionostatic energy; the pulse just happens to resemble a torpedo. Since calling it the IPE drew too many childish laughs, we called it the ion torpedo for ease and convenience.
"It's designed to cut through shields and disable an opponent vessel's primary systems without causing any major damage to the ship itself. Basically..."
"A 'stun setting' for ships," Capt. Perceval interrupted.
"More or less," said Gabriel coolly. "Ideally, the ion pulse would be used before phasers or photorps, diffusing a hostile situation before it can escalate." He turned to Adm. Durham. "I thought they were still having difficulties with fabrication of the focusing coils."
"They are. Your ships will be fitted with an array designed to simulate the pulse emitter, as well as software to simulate the effects of a pulse strike. It's as close to a live-fire exercise as we can manage right now, but the techs at R&D want the data from the test to do some fine-tuning." He looked over at Gabriel. "You know how engineers can be."
Gabriel ignored the jab and sat back down next to Connie. Adm. Durham handed each captain a PADD. "Each ship will also have one or two special systems installed -- simulated, like the ion pulse -- that your opponent will not know about. You have eight standard hours to make the necessary arrangements, then you will deploy to the Gar'ros system. Adm. MacAllister and I will observe from my ship, under cloak.
"Any questions?" Gabriel and John both shook their heads 'no'. "Excellent. I look forward to seeing you both in action. Dismissed."
"Aye, sir," said John crisply.
"On your word, sir," Gabriel replied.
* * * * * * * * * * * * *
"Come in," said Gabriel, in response to the ready room's door chime. Connie stepped in, her sleeves rolled up and a smudge of injector lubricant on her forehead. She handed Gabriel a large PADD.
"All systems and software necessary for the exercise have been installed," Connie said. "We're, um, 'ready to rock'."
"Two hours ahead of schedule," Gabriel noted proudly. "Well done, Commander." Gabriel noticed a hesitant look on Connie's face. He sighed. "But..."
"Coventry left an hour and a half ago."
"Of course she did." Gabriel slammed the PADD down on his desk in disgust.
"If I may, Captain," said Connie, "you've been rather, ah, cranky since we saw the Coventry at dock." She didn't have to complete the thought; Gabriel could imagine well enough what was on her mind. He indicated the seat opposite his and leaned heavily on his desk.
"It was my freshman year at the Academy, and Jack's senior year. Each year he'd been a cadet, Jack picked some unlucky cadet to be his 'special friend'."
"Ah."
"He made my life a living hell that year, never once offering even a weak attempt at explaining why. I tried to get help from a professor, any professor, but he was 'Mad Jack' Perceval, and what Mad Jack wants, Mad Jack gets."
"Including having Academy faculty look the other way?"
Gabriel nodded. "I spent hours just trying to hide from him, for all the good it did. You can't imagine how happy I was when he graduated -- valedictorian, of course."
"Didn't he actually beat the Kobayashi Maru sim?"
"Depends on who you ask. The sim did beat him, though he had it going for about fifteen minutes, and he gave one of the three simulator mainframes -- Balthasar, as I recall -- the computer equivalent of an aneurism. They had to scrub it down to the piezo-atomic level and reinstall the software. Took four months."
"And today's the first time you've seen him since?"
Gabriel snorted. "I wish. He was XO on the Ali ben Akeem when Durham was the captain. I was a lieutenant j.g. in engineering. Apparently 'friendship' with Jack is a lifetime honor.
"No sense in delaying the inevitable," said Gabriel as he stood and headed for the bridge. "But we do have 'home field advantage', that should win us a round or two. Take a moment to freshen up, Commander, and then set your course for the Gar'ros system, warp 6."
"Set my course for the Gar'ros system, warp 6 aye."
* * * * * * * * * * * * *
(shameless self-plug!!)
(You ought to read some of the HH stories - I think you would enjoy them.)
