Who's Got What and When and Where?
Posted on Fri Jun 9th, 2023 @ 4:23am by Warrant Officer Samual Johnson
2,301 words; about a 12 minute read
Mission:
Mission 4 - Like a Thunderbolt
Location: Command and Control, Faltan Station
Timeline: MD05 - 1130
"If that's not a new pot of coffee then turn around and go away," Fisher Mencowizc shouted as the aide's shadow darkened the entryway to the Operations office conference room. "And if you're bringing in more problems, you can just go to Falta where it belongs!" He didn't even look up. A spread of PaDDs were on the table, inputting their data into the master program he was running.
He reached for the mug at his right hand only to realize it was empty. Not only that, he could only continue surviving on coffee and aggravation for so long. He needed to take the time to eat, grab more than three hours of sleep on the couch and colder showers to wake him back up.
And who the hell wants to keep putting a single thing on a device that had the computing power to run a starship? It could handle multitasking!
"Uhm, Fisherman?" the petty officer aide said, her dark eyes giving an aside and embarrassed glance to the captain standing next to her who most assuredly heard everything he just said.
"No!" Mencowizc said, "You tell Graber and Carlson that they're both working Gamma shift and they're working on getting section forty three completed!"
"You!" Mencowizc said, grabbing the attention of another gold uniformed officer trying to sneak out of the room. "Get a line to Engineering and tell them that we are going to be rerouting power from the arboretums to crew quarters. We need crew fresh and ready to work more than we need pretty babbling brooks." He held up a hand to forestall any arguments. "You're not asking, you're telling them this is going to happen."
"Lieutenant?" the aide said again.
"What?" Fisher asked, finally turning and grabbing his empty mug. "Someone get more coffee in here!"
"She's trying to tell you that I'm here," Ronan said as he caught Fisher's gaze with his own. "I arrived by transport about ... " he paused for a moment to track back, "two hours ago."
"Yeah, and you are-" Mencowicz started saying before his eyes fell to the rank pips. Crap! "Captain Channe?"
He side turned to the table and made a motion. The area above it came to life and several different 'screens' were briefly visible as Mencowicz flipped through information. "You were...expected and logged into the system. I see the codes have been transferred. Unfortunately Chief is..." Mencowicz flipped to another screen, "...due to arrive Tuesday."
Ronan waited patiently while he finished reciting facts that he, Ronan, already knew (having lived through them) to arrive at a piece of useful information that was not, in point of fact, what he asked. "And does that mean," he said in an even, neutral tone, "that I must wait until Tuesday to get information from Operations?"
Mencowicz took a moment to check his response, he was getting the feeling that this was one of those kind of captains. "That would be an inaccurate assumption, Captain. We're all here...not now!" Mencowicz hissed as someone tried handing him another PaDD. With a wave of his hand he indicated it should be docked so the information could be compiled with all the rest. "... trying to do our very Starfleet best. " he continued right from where the interruption had stopped him. He once again grabbed his mug and looked sadly at the emptiness.
Now, we're getting somewhere,, Ronan thought. "How is the process of bringing the station online coming," he asked. "I know all of this is going to end up in a report and, you don't have to give me every little detail, but I'd like to know how things are going overall and if there's anything you need done by way of arm twisting to help expedite the process."
Now, finally, Mencowizc was glad his mug was empty. If he had coffee in his mug, he would have been drinking coffee. If he'd been drinking coffee when the captain asked that question, he would have sputtered coffee. Everywhere. But most assuredly on the captain fasting to ask that question. Are you serious with that?!? he immediately thought to himself but barely containing himself from saying it. It was also the kind of statement where 'serious' had the same meaning as 'insane'.
"Captain, managing the construction of a starbase is a balancing act between fubar and snafu on a good day. You throw in a biological attack, " he had turned back to the table, gesturing like some hyperactive children's party magician. The holographic display whirled in stuttered steps. "and the decision that the station that was behind schedule already must be completed now in a matter of weeks. " He moved to one side, throwing out screens to the edge of the table to be viewed. " In a matter of three days the amount of crews have grown exponentially, the sudden rerouting of supply ships have increased by a factor of Helen of Troy. But that's nothing to the influx of the personnel being suddenly shipped out to this not at all fully functional starbase. We're doing what we can to get matters in hand but that doesn't help when Engineering is as fubar as we are. Trying to get scheduling down is a nightmare worse than a Borg musical because I need to have accurate input- oh thank all the gods there are to make us more caffeinated than we are! -" he said as an NCO was going around the room and pouring out coffee, starting with his mug. He continued speaking while also deftly adding sweetener and cream, "from everyone involved. Right now, though it's a right fustercluck of Eugenics proportions. We logistics Fates are, however, working some mythological - no! they must first finish sector 37 alpha beta before they can try running turbolift six. Failure to do that will cause the turbolift to fly out of the station and briefly orbit the system's stars. " and once again as of the non sequitur hadn't happened at all, "prowess, we are getting it there. In fact, a meeting with my Engineering - yes, that's fine but see if you can start using the starboard side quarters first and then find out where that shipment of linens went - counterpart in ten minutes. Though, I'm sure he'll want to keep his appendages untwisted."
"On the way out here, I read through the report given to me by the construction team," Ronan said, his expression slightly bemused as he watched the man drinking coffee with the same kind of desperate zeal he'd seen on away team members after a training exercise near Vulcan's Forge. "They indicated that the station was only three days away from completion." He shook his head slightly. "I should have known better. Engineers always tend to give overly optimistic estimates. My concern is not so much the comfort of everyone aboard as their continued well-being. The attack on Falta III could happen here as well." He paused a moment to let that sink in.
"Three days?" Mencowicz asked, his eyes gone large but almost blank. "Three days, what fool thinks three days?" In a whirl he turned back to the table and gestured. The holographic data which was previously there suddenly went dark. Then his fingers began flowing across the input board and the table came to life again. Four different displays popped up, two of which was scrolling data in rapid succession and a third seemed to be a copy of a construction report from the Starfleet Corps of Engineers. "Damned god complex..." he muttered around a drink of coffee.
"Okay, so, the Corps are sending..." he glanced back at the screens for a moment, "another six...no eight...crews." He popped up a fifth screen and waved his hands in the air before the displays like that meant something. But data on the fifth display did change. "That means if we - and then -"
"I'm sorry, Captain," the young NCO that first led him through Ops to this display of madness whispered. "He really is a genius. Please bear that in mind." She looked back at the lieutenant with some awe. "But we're going to need lots more coffee."
"Not three days. No way in hell can it be three days," he said. "They're overestimating again." Mencowicz slammed both palms down on the edge of the table, the retort sharp even through the small buzz constantly going on in the room. "Six days. Seven at the outmost. Providing you stop whatever impending attack you believe is coming but that's really more the overbrawned gorillas in Security I imagine."
"And that, will be the last time I ever here you say something like that. Are we clear on that Lieutenant? Civility and respect. If you don't the words, look them up," Ronan growled. He turned toward the NCO and said, "what is it you actually do here, you know, when you're not serving coffee?"
"Me?" she said with just a little squeak in the voice. "I'm a Logistics officer charged with maintaining tracking and cost on construction supplies and equipment while also serving as Fishermen's yeoman. Keeping him well supplied with coffee is essential to help keep him from going down several tracks at once."
Meanwhile Mencowicz was scowling, trying to figure out what comment he made that was improper or derogatory. But he glanced at the display and the changing data and went back to the table.
"Overbrawned gorillas," Ronan said to Mencowicz, seeing his attention wander, "in case you're wondering." He sighed. "I'm going to need a report. What's working and what isn't. I don't care about sheets on the bed or anything like that. I care about weapon systems, shields, air .... the essentials."
"They would find that insulting?" Mencowicz said, still frowning, "but I thought they prided themselves on their brawn and warrior mentality-"
"Fishermen!" the NCO said, softly but also sternly. "I don't think that's the highlight the Captain wanted."
"Oh, yes," Fisher said, once again gesturing madly at the table. The previous screens disappeared once more and were replaced by a single screen, showing a schematic of the station. Sections were obviously still not in place and, like jigsaw pieces, other sections of it were floating alongside. If one were to really look, they'd see the various pieces moving. "Weapons, shields, environmental systems were all completed yesterday. We're just waiting for the over-...the..." he sputtered..."Security to sign off on the shields and weapons and I've scheduled final testing of environmental systems for today, as well as emergency transporter systems and escape pods. Those were priorities, Captain, and so were rushed into completion with all available resources put to it. Mainly the reason we're so far behind on most of the rest of the station."
"Good," Ronan said. "You'll also need to put priority to Science and Medical. We need to develop an understanding of the mechanism used on the attack at Faltan Base. Because that's not going to be a one-off event." He shook his head slowly, his attention turned for a second toward the main viewer, off at the moment, before returning to Mencowicz. "And we need to know who is behind it and how to protect ourselves when it happens again."
"Captain," Mencowicz said, flatly and with matter of fact grace, "I'm a Operations Logistics officer, I don't deal with information regarding terrorists or their threats."
"I think he meant bringing Science and Medical online," the young NCO said again.
"Oh, two days," Mencowicz said, once again turning to his holographic display. "In the meantime we have the Cooper just arriving to exchange personnel. It's a Medical ship but has the capability of running scientific missions as well. Medical and Science can operate out of the Cooper until the facilities aboard this station are ready." He gestured some more. "Yes, the Cooper is now temporarily stationed here." This time he looked pleased as he downed more of the coffee.
"Give me a few minutes to confirm this with the Cooper's captain," Ronan said. "Then notify Science and Medical about your estimate and inform them about the use of the shipboard facilities and contact Security about scheduling time for the tests they'll need to run on their systems."
Though his face remained impassive, there was definitely an air of the deep eye roll and surliness of a teenager asked to do some perfectly reasonable task which nonetheless interrupted their preprogrammed life. "All parties to be notified have been notified," Mencowicz said, the surliness hinted at in the statement. "That is part of my duties."
"And that," Ronan said as he fixed the lieutenant with a hard stare, "is why I'm going to talk to the Captain of the Cooper because smoothing unnecessarily ruffled feathers is part of my job."
"I don't believe the Cooper's commanding officer is of an avian-like species," Mencowicz said, frowning. "No, she is Trill, unJoined," he said after glancing at the holographic display. "They do not have feathers, ruffled or not. Perhaps she is wearing some form of non-standard uniform item that is-"
"Lieutenant, would you like more coffee?" the NCO asked, picking up the pitcher. Mencowicz's eyes immediately shifted to his mug as he nodded vigorously.
"We need to be leaving soon for the meeting with Engineering and the Corps," she said as she set the pitcher back on a side table.
"Good plan," Ronan murmured as he went to check the reports from human resources to find out just when exactly his Chief of Operations was going to show up.
WO Samual "Rook" Johnson appearing as NPC LTjg Fisher Mencowizc
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