From An Engineer To A...

Posted on Sat Feb 26th, 2022 @ 5:17am by Captain Calypso Skyie & Lieutenant Commander Alexander Espersen

Mission: Pirates! (Or Yo Ho Ho And A Bottle Of Yum)
Location: Holodeck One

Cally sank down into the hot tub after having the heat turned up a bit more. Doc Syrial had told her, before she'd left the ship, that it would take her a lot longer to fully heal now that she was definitely no longer a spring chicken. A long, exhalation as she settled in was interrupted by the holodeck door opening into her semi-tropical paradise of a plant-filled room of a wooden deck with the hot tub in the dead center of it.

"Who is it?" She called out, aware but not caring that she wasn't wearing a bathing suit, not having expected any company this afternoon. She shrugged under the water as she sat up slightly, shoulders barely coming out of the hot liquid.

“Sorry to interrupt,” said Alexander from the entranceway of the holodeck, which disappeared after he cleared it, giving them privacy at least. “I’m Alexander Espersen, your new chief engineer. I thought I’d report in, but if this is a bad time…” He kept his distance, unsure of the protocol.

"No, no, this is a good time, have no fear!" Calypso reached out and waved him over, "Come on over here, plenty of room for two if you'd care to join me. Doc's orders, you see, soaking in the heat helps with the healing process from getting shot. But you said Chief Engineer? Good to have one of those... Mind telling me about yourself?"

Alexander considered the suggested a moment before nodding. “Alright.” He began working his way out of his uniform and talked as he did. “I’ve been in engineering since ‘57. Enlisted first, like you. ‘85 was hard on me, and I’ve been in Sol since then. Last four years I’ve been instructing cadets in power systems.” Out of his clothes, he climbed into the hot tub. The water seemed to soothe his muscles, releasing what felt like years of tension. He let out a sigh. “A short while ago I was called into the administrator’s office and received orders to come here.”

"Utopia Planetia." Calypso nodded in reference to the 2385 attack of the synthetics, "I was en route to my post-Academy assignment when we heard about it. Hattery Bay was over by the Romulan Neutral Zone at that point." She got a look at her new Chief when he had undressed, apparently he was like her and had no problem when it came to body modesty and she shifted slightly in the tub, "But you've been in the Fleet since shortly after I was born. Lots of experience, even with the need for the OCS and the time you took off. How do you feel about being back out in space? Looking forward to it, nervous about it?"

“I won’t lie, I’m a bit nervous,” he replied. “But the Chimera is a beautiful ship, and it has a good heart. Being in charge of keeping that heart beating, that’s a big responsibility, but I think I can handle it.” He took a deep breath, closed his eyes, and settled more into the water. “My god this is nice.”

"Relaxes the muscles." Cally leaned forward towards him, cringing at a slight twinge of one of her wounds, "And Chimera does have a good heart and we absolutely need to keep it beating properly, but I've got another problem." She paused for a couple seconds as she tried to word what she needed to say properly, "A few days ago, I was shot three times while attending a diplomatic greeting. My Exec, Commander Driskell, also was wounded, but he got hit far worse. He's headed back towards Earth, most likely, for some rebuilding of his own. That leaves me with a hole where he was. We've not been blessed with higher ranking officers, which means that I'm going to need to tap you for that slot." She gave him an apologetic smile.

“Oh.” So not a Chief Engineer after all. It was true; if Driskell had been reassigned, then he was the next most senior officer after the Captain. He expected that he might be Second Officer, like he’d been on the Marin. But First Officer…that he did not expect. “Are you sure?”

Cally leaned back again, resting her arms on the side of the hot tub once more, again, cringing at the motion of her healing shoulder. This was a bit of a concern, what she was seeing but specifically not feeling from him. She'd once again locked down her telempathic senses, but he was uncertain? Usually, if someone exhibited a lack of desire for a command position, they were never offered it, or another position of authority again. But... "I'm as certain as I can be, Commander Esperson. You're the second most senior officer on board this starship and I suppose that if you really wanted, I could push Lieutenant Vallery up to Exec, but he was an Assistant department head only a few months ago, this is his first stint as an actual head of department."

She leaned her head back to stare at the ceiling, "If you'd like, we could have you as the acting Executive Officer for the time being, on sufferance, until it's either confirmed by the Commodore or she finds someone else. I can inform her that we're in the market for one or the other of Exec or Chief Engineer again, because given the howler monkey impression that Lieutenant Maurnier gave me a few hours ago, I doubt she'd be able to pry him off the Starbase for anything other than his own funeral." She raised her head back up, "Until she found someone for us, you'd have to be double-dipping, but I'm sure you've already met Acting Ensign Jenna Jade before you came searching for me?"

“No longer acting,” Alexander reported. “My first orders from Commodore Everly, and under my authority as Chief Engineer-presumptive. After she explained her dilithium matrix work, it was a no-brainer. That kid deserves it. As for me, I’ll do what you need me to do. Til I’m dead or you find someone better,” he added with a smirk.

“Oh, by the Four.. You are not coming in with that piece of garbage ‘movie’ from Earth’s past and getting away with it!” Cally playfully splashed some water at him, “Maybe until I find someone with a better sense of humor? But yes, Jenna does deserve it, even if she constantly beats up on me on the tennis court. She can hold down Engineering whenever you aren’t there, did she tell you about Lieutenant Laura Davenport, by chance?”

"She didn't get the chance to tell me much," he answered. "I didn't give her much time. And that Maurnier fellow barely said three words to me before getting off the ship."

"Maurnier gave me a piece of his mind after we dropped out of warp back into the system. He's not a big fan of the void." Cally shook her head, "Davenport was worse, lazy and abrasive, always farming the work out to her people while doing as little of it as she could. She was competent, but even when she was doing her job, she paid no attention. That ignorance almost got a couple of the crew killed when she updated an active holodeck." She sighed as she sank back down to her neck in the hot water, "So, tell me about the new pod we're getting installed soon? The Starbase added it to our refit list, but they're still not ready for us yet."

"It's quite a piece of kit, we're getting, Captain," Alexander said proudly. "You can think of it as halfway between the standard scientific model you already have installed and the tactical model more common on combat patrol ships. We've added a capacity to fire torpedoes from the pod. There's also a new astrometrics labs slash tactical command centre on the top deck and an isolation lab in the middle deck." He took a deep breath and released it as a pleased sigh. "I'm quite proud of it, actually. Mr. Beauvoir and I did good work. It's being manufactured now." He didn't address the Davenport issue. He hoped it went without saying that he wasn't lazy or ignorant like that, especially given his report on the pod. And he was fairly certain at least a few of the ship's junior engineers knew him to anything but incompetent.

“Mister Beauvoir? I assume you mean our new Lieutenant for Science?” She didn’t wait for a response, it being rhetorical, “I’ll have to take a look at the specs and info on the pod when I have half a chance, which will probably be in an hour or so. For some reason, the docs don’t think I should be up and about all that much for the next week or two and then to ‘ease back into things’.” She smiled brightly, “abut when we’re in informal circumstances, I’m not ‘Ma’am’ or ‘Captain’, Alex, I can call you Alex? I’m just Cally. We’re going to get to know each other rather well, I’m certain, so let’s get things going the right way rather than the ‘stick up our asses’ way.”

“I suppose this is about as informal as circumstances can get between us, so that seems fair, Cally,” Alexander replied. “And Alex is fine. It’s what my sister calls me.” Sadness quickly flushed through him and across his expression, but he tried to get past it with a quick mental exercise a Counselor had taught him.

It didn’t take an empath to see something had distressed him, so Cally moved across the hot tub and sat up next to him, draping one bare arm across his shoulders and changed the subject, “So, Alex, what sort of things do you get up to when you’re not on duty? I myself tend to swim and play tennis when I’m not all shot up or broken down, also do as much flying as I can get away with, which really isn’t that much these days..”

Alexander smiled at the Captain’s gentle, reassuring touch. “I enjoy the gym, or most sports on the holodeck. I’ve not done much swimming but this experience is making me rethink that. But most of all, I like to draw. Landscapes, ships, objects, people. I have notebooks full of pencil drawings and computer folders full of digital drawings.”

"That's rather quite intriguing... If you don't object, I'd be rather interested in seeing some of them." Cally said interestedly, "I'm not much of an artist, a bit of a singer, but drawing a stick-man is quite possibly my best impression of a being." She chuckled, "But I think once I'm healed up, I'm going to take you on the court and get some of my frustration out on you. I'd take Jenna, but... She's too damned good."

"I'll join you for some tennis," said Alex. That's one game I've not played in years but I'm sure it'll come back to me. And I'd love to show you my work. Most of my books will be delivered to my quarters by tomorrow. Maybe tomorrow evening, we can have dinner? Discuss the ship, the crew, and the mission? I can't cook worth a damn but I assume the replicators here are good."

“We could even go to the Hydra,” Cally suggested, then saw the confusion on his face and laughed, “That’s the name of the ships lounge. Anara seems to be an accomplished cook and she’s got some helper, and as the Commanding Officer, I’m sure I can get a table even on short notice.” She puffed herself up dramatically, chest out with another muted laugh.

"I'm glad to hear you have such influence on board," Alexander joked. "Why the Hydra? I mean, why name it that?"

“I panicked.” Calypso shrugged, deflating slightly, “Mythical beast, a Chimera has three heads, traditionally a Hydra has three heads, so now I have to find something to name after a Cerberus and Ghidorah as well. We recommissioned in a rush without a lot of personnel until we hit the Starbase here, so decisions were made because I didn’t want it named ‘Three Forward’ or something of the like. Why, do you have a better idea?” Her eyes glittered as she asked the question.

“No, and I agree that it’s better than Three Forward,” Alexander said. “What about the large auxiliary craft? I checked the manifest and you’re supposed to have a Delta Flyer, a Waverider, an Argo and an Aerowing. Assuming they’re all on board and don’t have otherwise relevant names, they could be good for three headed creatures. Cerberus. Ghidorah. Maybe Hecate. And…Erawan?” He let out a laugh. “Those art books about mythology finally paid for themselves. I’d even add nose art to them myself.”

"Hmm... Well, we've got the craft.. Don't ask us where we got some of them and I won't tell you any lies." Cally mused, "We're also heavy one Razor fighter, but don't you touch Calamity! But Hecate, the goddess of spells and magic, but I can't place Erawan in my head.." She shook her head, "The smaller shuttles we can probably go with lesser creatures, but Hecate doesn't have multiple heads that I'm aware of. We could rename the lounge to something else if we use Hydra for one of the larger craft."

"Erawan is a three-headed elephant creature from Thai," Alexander explained. "The Thai name for Airavata, the elephant that carried the deity Indra in Hinduism, though in India it usually just had one head. As for Hecate, she didn't have three heads, but was usually depicted as a sort of three-in-one being. Of course, all of these names are from Earth cultures, or pop culture in the case of Ghidorah. We can probably find a name or two from non-Earth mythologies, too. But what is the 'Calamity'?"

"Calamity is my call sign, Alex, Calypso 'Calamity' Skyie." Cally smirked at him, "Comes from when I crashed a fighter during pilot training, washed me out of that for the duration of the Dominion War, put me into assault shuttles instead. Got back into fighters afterwards, when the survivors from the War were retiring faster than they could be replaced, then after my final crash on Essex I faced the choice of going straight with the Fleet or get discharged. I went to the Academy for refresher courses and flew starships instead, worked my way to here, my first command. And then get shot. Three times."

"So we have one Razor fighter, named for your callsign," Alexander said. "Does that mean you intend to fly it yourself? And if so, on missions or as a Captain's Yacht?" He let out a chuckle. "I suppose this is that first time I remind you of the rules associated with Captains going on missions. And probably not the only time."

“You can assume all of the above and wouldn’t be wrong.” A predatory smile crossed Calypso’s face, “Of course I’m not just going to go flying out into a combat situation on a whim, but it does make a handy personal runabout. Besides, going on away missions can’t be more dangerous than staying in the ship.” She touched her left shoulder, then reached under the water to touch her abdomen and right hip, “Those were because I stayed here, safe on board. If I’d gone down to the planet, I would have been perfectly fine instead of almost bleeding out in sickbay! Rules be damned, they’re only guidelines in any case… Unless you’d prefer to go on potentially combat trips off the ship?”

"My priority will be to maximize crew safety, yours included," replied Alexander. "But I take your point that danger can come to the ship as easily as to the away teams. We'll just need to risk-manage. And I'm not champing at the bit to go on combat missions myself. I've had my share of those." He lifted one arm above the water to point out a burn scar. "USS Valdemar, 2365. We were fighting the Cardassians and they got some lucky shots in. The ship was lost, though thankfully the battle was won, because I'm not sure we'd be having this conversation if the Cardassians had picked up the escape pods." He then pointed to another scar on his left palm. "USS Shepard, 2375. Breen power dampener hit the ship and a discharge when through the panel I was working on."

Okay, it wasn’t a competition, but still, Cally traced a small scar on her left forearm, “Second battle of Mortium during the war, Jemhadar disruptor graze that didn’t want to heal properly.” She tapped her left leg, “This isn’t original hardware, had to be regrown after that second crash onto Essex at the end of my career, about six inches above the knee, then broke it again in October of ‘93, after we lost Perseus.” She grew quiet for a moment, “Heard about that one?”

“Word of it circled through the Academy halls, but the stories the cadets told each other were light on details.” Alexander sat up a bit and looked Cally in the eye. “What happened?”

"Perseus was an Akira-class ship, commanded by Captain Marjorie Taylor, I was the Exec. We'd made a rather good team when it came to hunting down pirates." Cally gave a tentative smile, "And we'd just about finished hunting down a band of them, the head honcho's ship was cornered in an asteroid field. Of course we went in after him, but he mined the asteroids on remote detonators, nailed us from all angles. We started the mission with four hundred and ninety-four crew, one hundred thirty-eight of us survived in a few shuttles and escape pods." She shook her head slowly, "We realized the trap right before it was sprung, but we were too far in to back out. Margie didn't make it off the bridge, hell, only three of us on the bridge survived the effort. Lieutenant Jikanassi was eviscerated, Lieutenant Faraday was decapitated, I don't think enough was found of Ensign Laramie to ID him except if we'd recovered DNA to do it by."

Alexander nodded solemnly. “Did someone finally get them? The pirates, I mean.”

Calypso looked down at the surface of the water and shook her head again, "They're still out there. Oh, the Fleet sent a task group in, finally, to root them out, but by then 'Nemesis', what he'd named his ship, had already left the region. Picking off merchant ships and other small fry may get a single ship sent out to investigate, but any pirate that can kill an actual starship? That's who the Admirals really want to take out of action. He's probably in another sector, back to snagging freighters again, staying under the sensor sweep."

“Sooner or later he’ll make a mistake,” Alexander assured her. “They always do. When I was chief engineer of the Marin, there was a small group trying to steal from the resettlement program. We responded to a raid or two but we were always too late. They were just hitting automated supply ships so they weren’t too high on anyone’s priority list. Then they escalated and raided a resettlement colony. Suddenly the Tal Shiar cared about the situation.” He chuckled. “I honestly don’t know what happened to them, but I expect it wasn’t good.”

"If they got caught BY the Tal Shiar? Then even I wouldn't want to be there when they got caught. I'll space pirates if need be, shoot them first if they weren't grotesquely horrible even. But the Romulans? Torture first." Cally shuddered with the thought. She truly was a Marine, one who'd seen slaughter in person, "I've got an appointment with the Commodore tomorrow morning, not sure if she's going to sic us on the pirates that have been in this area or put us into refit. Did she give you any insight into her plans for us?"

“She didn’t say anything outright, but it sounds like proper exploration,” Alexander answered. “Out in the unknown. New life and new civilizations, as the saying goes. The pod Beauvoir and I designed will help us out on a real exploration mission.”

"And with me as our defacto diplomat?" Cally snorted in amusement, "Hopefully we don't run into anyone more powerful than the Federation that I offend by making the wrong hand gesture. I'll add that one to the list of our needs, but that points towards the refit option first. Which in turn means I'm going to be running around getting logistics in place and us stocked up completely to the gills. You, however, Alex, are going to get to know the girl as best you can. We actually CAN be completely independent. Did you know we can spend a few days cannibalizing an asteroid as our resupply?"

“I did read the full brief on my way here, Cally,” Alexander said. “And ask most of my former students, Ms. Jade among them, and they’ll say our former Marine of a Captain is stars above me in terms of diplomacy. But I’ll do my part. We’ll begin the refit the instant there’s bay space. Earlier if I can manage it.”

“I pity poor us.” Cally sighed, then groaned as she pushed herself to her feet in the tub with her good arm and stepped out wearing nothing but what she wore when she was born, completely unconcerned with Alex’s presence as she gingerly got out of the steaming water and semi-sauntered over to her towel and began to dry off, “Alas, though, I do think I’ve got a bunch of paperwork on my desk, especially since we’ve got a new Exec I’m going to have to get assigned to the duty and the need for requisitions.” She gave him a devious smile, “I’ll handle this set of it all, but just as Margie told me the day I became her Exec, the best way to learn how to do the job of commanding a ship in the Fleet is to learn all of the pain in the ass parts of it, in other words: Paperwork.”

Damn, Alexander thought as his eyes lingered a bit longer than they should have. He was a professional. He had no compunctions about bathing in front of members of other sexes. Like the Captain, he was Enlisted-to-Officer; you showered, dressed, and slept with everyone, regardless of who they were. But still, he was a man with a libido. Being professional didn’t mean he didn’t look. He just made an effort to be subtle about it.

“I’m certain I’ll learn it all,” he said, “once I get out of this. Was there much time left on your holodeck reservation? If so, I might run it out for you.”

"You know, there's a wonderful thing about being the Captain of a ship with five holodecks: I can basically reserve one whenever I have the desire for it." She'd wrapped a bathrobe around herself by this point, tossing the damp towel to the side, "I'm perfectly willing to share this one with you, so take all the time you want. I'm for bed shortly, and I'll see you in the morning for the morning brief before I'll once again let you loose in Engineering, then as you said, dinner tomorrow evening, right?"

“Right. Good night, Cally.” He closed his eyes and relaxed into the water. It would be hard to get out, but such was the way of things.