LtCmdr Jovenan – I was supposed to be the one who asks the questions here!
Jovenan
((Sensor pod, USS Artemis))
One after another, their new Chief of Ops found and identified the target dummies. They didn’t seem to have any issues doing so, instead they had started asking questions about the Beholder’s operations. After Jovenan had once again verified the frequency they provided to her, she adopted something of a smirk.
Jovenan: Correct. ::pause:: Should I take your willingness to chat as an indication that you find the exercise too easy?
Turning towards the Lieutenant, she didn’t expect them to react to her look in any way. They were still wearing the helmet that blocked their vision to the pod but displayed the image from the point of view of the drone. In a way, they probably felt like they were out there, and her voice was merely a transmission from somewhere else.
K’Wara: I could just be a chatterbox. ::flippant smile:: You know what they say about pilots.
Jovenan: I think we’re ready to move to the second stage.
She turned back towards her terminal and switched the programme the system was running. In a moment, the target dummies shining in the different ranges of the electromagnetic radiation should vanish from the Lieutenant’s view and start looking something entirely different.
K’Wara: No, that’s not it - oh!
The Beholder would have converted the individual data streams from the beacons as complex information: asteroids, cloaked ships, pre-warp crafts, anomalies… All sorts of fun things that they might encounter during their missions. Because where was the challenge and the sense of exploration in just looking at bright spots in the sky?
K’Wara: That’s different.
Well, she had one more thing she could use to hike the difficulty level.
Jovenan: All types of scanners are go, you can choose which to use. Just note that some of them are obviously wrong choices. ::pause:: Which one do you prefer, sports or music?
K’Wara: We have scanners for those? ::chuckles:: Depends on what you consider sports. I was on the Performative Shuttle Piloting team in the Academy. Your turn: Hiking or sailing?
Jovenan raised both her eyebrows. The Lieutenant didn’t hesitate for a second before responding, and even returned the question back to her. They were either the most able officer she had seen in a while, or the most overconfident one. They definitely didn’t need the latter type on the Artemis. Although she had endorsed their promotion to the department chief, she still had the opportunity to figure out what they really were.
Jovenan: Hiking. Love hiking. I’m a pretty decent long-distance cross country runner. Never controlled a watercraft. How’s that first target?
The Lieutenant guided the drone to a suitable place to scan the first target. They went through the different scanners in a very sensible order, something that Jovenan could tell wasn’t a result of improvisation but thorough obedience to the protocol. On her screen, she could see that they checked the target for typical and dangerous types of radiation and then for artificial sources of readings – something that would help them massively once they moved to the later targets. Each step turned out negative, typical, stable or whatever else “non-threatening” might be to the scanner, before they went with the scientific readings.
K’Wara: Hmm... ::silent focus:: small S-type asteroid, 68% magnesium-silicate, 0.58 μm wavelength.
Jovenan: Very good. You can move on and tell me, overnight stay in city or out there in the wild?
K’Wara: Oh, metropolitan, definitely. Nature is beautiful, but not for sleeping in. Planet or Spacestation?
The Lieutenant kept moving on. These two targets weren’t too much harder than the EM ones in the beginning, except that they would need to figure out how to operate more than one type of scanners to find what they were looking for. More than providing something interesting to scan for, they were there to create the false sense of ease. If Jovenan kept distracting them, and they still got good results for the first few targets, they might start thinking the rest will be like that, too. In reality, the third target onwards would come back to bite them. She just needed to keep chatting.
Jovenan: Most of the time, a planet. I’m a planetary scientist, after all. Space station only if the planet is like Risa… um, as in, lost most of its natural value for artificial environmental work. What are you reading?
Jovenan waited as the scans of the second target were undergoing. This one was also just an asteroid, although there would be something more than just rock – not that rocks in themselves were uninteresting, but they were something one would expect to find in an asteroid.
K’Wara: Response
Jovenan: Do you happen to remember what would happen if that amount of metreon gas would be suddenly released?
K’Wara: Response
She chuckled a little. This was just building up to the more challenging tasks that were ahead of the Lieutenant.
Jovenan: Okay. This is a sensor operating exercise, so I won’t be testing your trivia knowledge about unrelated matters further. However, tell me, geology or biology?
K’Wara: Response
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Lieutenant Commander Jovenan
Chief Science Officer
USS Artemis-A
E239911J11