Forwarded by the ASC-VSO Posted: Sun, 11 Jan 2004 12:43:40 -0800 In: alt.startrek.creative From: "Jay P Hailey" JayPHailey@TIC1.NET Title: Star Trek: Outwardly Mobile Author: Jay P Hailey (JayPHailey@yahoo.com) Series: MISC - TNG OCs Codes: None Part: 3/335 Rating:[PG] Archive: Fine with me, just tell me where. Disclaimer: Paramount owns all things Star Trek. I claim Original Characters and Situations for me. The Holly Hop Incident By Jay P. Hailey And Dennnis Washburn Soon my crew was as complete as it was going to get. I had dashed straight away to Starfleet academy and picked up a fourth year cadet named Yo. He was now taking a cadet cruise aboard the USS Harrier as the First Officer's Yeoman. He was diligent, upright, prepared, industrious and clean. A regular boy scout. I assigned him as Li'ira's yeoman. In that job his boy scout tendencies were put to good use. Li'ira began to loosen up a little now that she had a large fraction of the work load taken off her. I had also requisitioned a computer expert of my acquaintance from Starfleet Command. He had a sideline in producing holodeck adventures. A friend of mine was an avid computer gamer and had dragged me into one of his holodeck adventures. About the time my friend and I were trying to harmonize the ancient runes to open the mystic gates, and hating the man who had stuck us in this mess, I had an epiphany. Most members of Starfleet Security were well trained grunts. They were very good at the application of force under orders from the ship's officers. But the reason for their reputation as grunts and "Redshirts" was that there was too much detail to ever hope to train them to deal with every contingency. But I had wanted these evil Holodeck exercises for another reason. I felt that with the proper stimuli, the "Redshirts" under my command could learn to think creatively on their feet. They could learn to duck and to cheat, and to change the rules on their opponents. I wanted a team of Redshirts that would cause enemy commanders and villains to tear their hair out in frustration. So I contacted the author of these Holodeck Role Playing Games, and discovered that he was Ensign Gerald Bruce, a computer specialist at Starfleet Command. I drafted him, using my "Captain's prerogative". After assigning him to the position of Captain's Yeoman. I told him of my plan and sent him to work on it. -*- Soon the time came for the USS Harrier to leave Spacedock. It had been two weeks of hair pulling and nail biting. The actual event I will never forget. I arrived on the bridge at about 08:55 in the morning. Li'ira had stopped barking orders, and now stated them with exaggerated calm. I supposed that Colonel Flagg had given her more extensive briefings. She was in the center seat readying the USS Harrier to fly. The bridge of the USS Harrier was old fashioned. It was suited more to a ship from thirty years ago, than a test bed of modern technology. It even had he old fashioned Nav/Helm console as a single unit near the front of the bridge. But all the displays were letter perfect, and the patter on the bridge could have come out of any manual. "Main Deuterium Feed" "Check" "Power Generation, all modes" "Power generation, all modes, shows green" "Navigational feed" "Starfleet NavCom updated at zero-hundred hours, all checked" "Main Sensor class three diagnostic" "Check, Main Sensor nominal." "Time: T-Minus five minutes and counting" "All Hands! All Hands! T-Minus five!" Et cetera. I'm sure the technical jargon is boring to you, but to me it was the language of a smooth operation, ready to roll. It was as though nothing were weird or spooky about the whole event so far, and I let myself go with it. "Captain on the Bridge!" Snapped the officer of the bridge. The whole bridge stopped and stood up. I stood for a moment, acutely embarrassed. It helped to realize that the "Captain" was a role that the whole ship looked up to. It wasn't me, it was the office. And I knew that I had to make it look good and give the kids in the crew their magic feather. I looked around briefly and made sure that each of the bridge crew saw me looking at them. And then I let the grin spread across my face. "Excellent." I said. "As you were." I really wanted to say "Coooool!" But it wouldn't have seemed captainly. I think that most of them got it. "Report, Commander?" I asked Li'ira. It was pro forma, but that made it important, even so. "All systems up, and running to specifications. All departments report secure and ready for space, Captain." Her eyes were straight ahead, and I could almost see the proper manual pages flashing across her mind. "Very Good, Commander." I made the proper reply, and then took my place at the center of the circus. I remember that the next few minutes seemed to take forever, but I can't specifically recall why. Two minutes later I said "Communications, give my compliments to Spacedock, and request departure clearance." Flagg responded "Aye, Sir." The clearance was given, and I said, "Commander, take us out." Then I remembered, had she ever done this before? Her technical training was without fault. The USS Harrier made a textbook departure and took off across Earth's solar system at a leisurely one half impulse. "Put us on the specified heading, and inform me when we reach the testing site, please, Commander." I ordered. "You have the bridge." Then I got up and had to straighten that damned two piece uniform. We had recently switched from a form fitting jump suit that really left too little to the imagination, to a two piece version. The two piece was a little easier, but it led to something that was called "The Picard Maneuver" after the famous Starship Captain. The jacket of the uniform had a tendency to ride up on the tummy, and whenever one stood up, it needed to be pulled down and straightened to restore the trim. I performed "The Picard maneuver" and went to the turbo lift. I figured one truly was a captain when they could keep their dignity through the trials of Starfleet uniforms. I wasn't there, yet. I went to the engineering room. Lt. Green and Charles Holly were up to their elbows in Holly's strange device. I caught the eye of Chief Dubonich. He looked pointedly at Lt. Green and gave an eloquent shrug. All around the engineering room, things were busy. The first launch of a ship just out of refit is a cranky business. But the old chiefs were running the fresh young engineers every which way around the compartment, and all seemed quite well in hand. I approached the two men in the center of the action. Over the background noise of the engineering room, I heard them talking gibberish. I assumed it was mathematical notations on the operation of the device, but for all of me, it could have been Swahili. "Lt. Green, report." I ordered. The Chief Engineer of the USS Harrier looked at me in surprise, and then glanced around at his department. "Uh," He groped "Everything seems okay, Captain." "What is the meaning of this interruption!?" Charles Holly demanded. I supposed it had been awhile since he had met anyone with whom he could talk shop. "Well, sir, I was wondering if the device would be ready for its test on time." I tried to speak soothingly without letting Holly know I thought he was a mad quack. I shouldn't have bothered. I could have told him that the ship was under attack for all the notice he took of me. "Yes, yes, tell Starfleet that their precious drive will be ready on time." And then he turned back to Green and launched into another spate of gobbledy gook. Green had the good grace to at least look embarrassed as he was swept away on a mathematical tide. I went to Chief Dubonich and said "Chief, how's she holding together?" Dubonich looked at me, pointedly. His expression asked the question when to voice it would have been insubordinate. Did I know what I was doing? "She's a good ship sir, all the new equipment is settling in, you know how it is." Then he switched his gaze to Holly and Green "Figure they'll blow us up with that thing, sir?" "I wanted to speak to you about that. Do you think the isolation fields could hold it if his doo-hickey just plain explodes? " I asked. I thought it was a good possibility. I had also measured the potential of the blast if Charles Holly's' device simply took the energy we fed it, and used it to explode. The fields in the engineering room should hold. Dubonich looked at me. "Think it'll break that way, Captain?" "I want to cover every possibility, Chief." "Yes, sir, I think we can come through that, all right." -*- I told myself I would then go to my office, and have a productive working day. I didn't. I spent the rest of the day making a nuisance out of myself. I toured the USS Harrier, more or less at random, and poked my nose into nearly every compartment. It was difficult enough for the new crew to get into the routine of their new jobs, but that day, I made it worse. Nobody could turn around, it seemed, without me being there to offer my useless and interfering comments. I suppose they were mostly smart enough to say "Yes, Sir!" And then do it the right way when I was out of sight again. But there wasn't a department that I missed. Ten hours later, I returned to the bridge. A satisfactory report awaited me there, and I retired for the evening. We were right on schedule and would arrive at the test site, near the edge of the solar system, the next morning. I had given us a roundabout course to the test site to give the ship a chance to shake down. We weren't really supposed to be going much of anywhere, but I preferred to have the ship a little more comfortable with itself when we finally tested the Holly Hop drive. --- Outgoing mail is certified Virus Free. Checked by AVG anti-virus system (http://www.grisoft.com). Version: 6.0.556 / Virus Database: 348 - Release Date: 12/26/2003 -- Stephen Ratliff ASC Stories Only Forwarding In the Pattern Buffer at: http//trekiverse.crosswinds.net/feed/ Yahoo! Groups Links To visit your group on the web, go to:http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ASCL/ To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to:ASCL-unsubscribe@yahoogroups.com Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to the Yahoo! Terms of Service. From ???@??? 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