Enter the Knave

Posted on Wed 28th Mar, 2018 @ 9:28pm by Lieutenant Jacen Miller & Commander Mikaela Locke

916 words; about a 5 minute read

Mission: Brushfires
Location: Bridge, USS Orion/Starbase Vanguard, Ops
Timeline: Approximately 1 Hour after the Samurai's Arrival

Jacen had been on the bridge of the Orion when it exited warp. He was seated to the left of Captain, with whom he was idly chatting. Captain Langstrom had taken Jacen to a stalemate in their game of chess the night before, and they had been discussing their favorite strategies in the ancient game. Jacen happened to glance up at the view screen as the star lines shrank into points of light, he was surprised by what he saw. There was a trail of debris leading from the outer system towards the station. Jacen immediately noted that there was too much debris for it to have been a shuttle accident. There was a swarm of Brunel type worker pods around one of the various pieces of debris. There were several squadrons of fighters on patrol, many more than what a Starbase would normally have on CAP.

What happened here? Something big took a beating...most likely a one sided beating at that. Jacen thought to himself, he could hear Captain Langstrom issuing the order to hail the station. Jacen was busy with other things. He was running through the list of ship deployments in the area that he had memorized before leaving Earth. The only ship in the area large enough to leave this much debris and survived is the USS Samurai...What could have done this? He was brought back into the moment by a tap on his shoulder.

"Son, you'd better get over there. I'm sure they're going to need every helping hand they can get." Langstrom said softly to him, "We're entering transporter range now. Head down to transporter room one. They've got the coordinates for their operations transporter pad."

Jacen nodded and stood up, smoothing the front of his uniform. "Thank you, Captain...for everything." he said, almost regretfully. He liked the older man. He had reminded him of his great-grandfather. Langstrom simply nodded and barked out several orders. Jacen turned and without a word made his way to the transporter room. Silently he stepped onto the pad and nodded to the transporter chief. A few moments later his vision was obscured by the familiar lights of the transporter. When it came back, he was on a small transporter pad, overlooking the Starbase's Main Operations Room. It was a flurry of activity. There were Ensigns and enlisted personal scurrying everywhere. In the middle of the room, conspicuously calm, he saw a woman with Lieutenant Commander's pips on her collar. She was about the same age as his own sister, and Jacen noted that she was quite young to be the Executive Officer of a Starbase. Taking a deep breath he stepped down from the pad and approached her. He did not come to attention, or wait for her to appear to have a free moment.

"Commander Locke? I'm Lieutenant Jacen Miller." he looked around before continuing, whimsically, "You appear to have quite the situation on your hands... am I correct in assuming that someone has attacked and severely damaged the Samurai?"

"You assume correctly, lieutenant," Locke replied without looking at him. "Ensign Stadler, let Doctor Addams know I'm on my way to sickbay," she called across the busyness of the operations centre. "I'm sorry," she continued, finally turning to address the new arrival. "Who are you again?"

Jacen allowed a wry smile to cross his face. Locke's response hadn't been unexpected, but the manner in which she made the reply had surprised him...and Jacen was a person who was rarely surprised by these sort of things.

"I have many names, Commander. Radek, Ambar, Khendon... each of them has their uses, I suppose. The name that would of the most use to you at this particular moment, however, is Jacen Miller. I have the dubious honor of being assigned as Vanguard's Chief Intelligence Officer. I dare say, that I arrived just in time to be of use to you."

"Really?" Locke raised an eyebrow, more in disappointment than surprise. "Well, I'm sure your transfer orders are on my desk somewhere," she replied with a hint of resignation. She was already feeling that, since she would likely only be a caretaker-commander, Starfleet Command weren't fully consulting her on certain issues - it seemed that had extended to personnel, "But as you're probably gathered, I've had a pretty busy day."

She began to walk in the general direction of the turbolift at the front right of the ops centre and indicated for him to follow. "You want to be helpful? Great. The situation's this: We've got half a Sovereign-class vessel just arrived, multiple casualties, multiple injuries, massive damage. We're still trying to establish exactly what happened. That's Lieutenant Baro," she indicated to her three-o'clock, to the Bajoran woman sat at the operations station, her fingers still flying furiously over her console. "Tell her I'm in sickbay, and then offer to do anything that's going to help her."

Mikaela reached the turbolift doors which opened for her, she stepped in turned and faced the new arrival. "Oh, and one more thing..."

"Welcome to Vanguard, lieutenant."

The turbolift doors closed and Locke was gone.

Jacen allowed himself a quick smile as he looked at the turbolift doors that Locke had disappeared behind. She is going to be a fun one... he thought to himself. He took a deep breath and made his way over to the Lieutenant the Locke had pointed out to him.

 

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