Ensign Mi'shune sh'Sonora - It's Just a Little Scrape...
d.reinhart
sh’Sonora: I can have our auxiliary crafts prepped and ready within the hour, Sirs. We may run into work that’s too tough for the EVA, but too delicate for the runabout’s tractor beam. I suggest we have a work bee prepped for backup.
McLaren: I agree, having a backup would be good.
Sylvax: Redundancy is rarely wasted in situations like this.
Munshi: ?
sh’Sonora: ::Claps her hands together.:: I got a lot of pre-flight checking and some stowage to take care of, so I best be about it! ::Borrowing the LCARS screen, she quickly checked the shuttle roster and selected a runabout from the list.:: This’ll save some time. The USS Zambezi is available at shuttle bay 5 and her mission module’s still set to engineering. And I can reserve a work bee from the shuttle pool at bay 7, just in case.
McLaren: I think that covers our plan. We can head to the shuttle bay then, and gather whatever materials we need.
Munshi: ?
Sylvax: I’ll inform Sickbay of our deployment window and ensure emergency protocols...
Osmond: =/\= Osmond to medical. We need an officer on the Promenade immediately. =/\=
Sylvax: =/\= Acknowledged. What’s the situation? =/\=
McLaren: You'd better go. Sounds serious.
It was bad form to interrupt a departmental meeting unless it was for a really good reason. Commander McLaren seemed to agree with Mi’shune’s assessment. Sylvax handled the interruption with practiced patience, accepting that the repair team would be down one safety and medical officer.
Sylvax: Understood, Commander. I’ll rendezvous with my assigned team on the Promenade.
McLaren: Good luck Ryden. We'll get the hull patched... you get whomever needs it down there patched up.
Sylvax: ::smiles impishly:: Try not to add to my patient list while I’m gone.
While the Lieutenant made all haste to the turbolift, the precariously sobered Andorian promised in silence that she’d not plan to get into any more medical emergencies… if she could help it.
McLaren: And I think we have a runabout to get to.
Munshi: ?
sh'Sonora: What was the old terran saying? Kick the tires and light the fires?
Sol appeared to agree.
McLaren: If we put in the requisition with Operations, we should have all the materials we need once we arrive... they're staggeringly efficient.
Munshi: ?
sh'Sonora: WIth your permission, Sir, I’d like to get started now.
McLaren: ?
Snapping off a salute, Mi’shune’s pivot on her heel and brisk stride towards the turbolift hinted at an officer renewed and refreshed, however Lieutenant Sylvax’s hypospray concoction had done so. Alone in the turbolift, speeding to the shuttlebay where the Zambezi waited, she could exhale heartily, allow her antennae to sag, and cradle the dulling throb thumping away behind her forehead.
sh’Sonora: I am never, ever, drinking again.
The ex-inebriate meant it too, as long as she remembered to follow through.
((Runabout Zambezi, Currently Parked in Shuttlebay 5, Starbase 118))
Control Tower: =/\=Control Tower to Zambezi, you are cleared for launch.=/\=
When it came to prep and loading, Mi’shune felt the same way as she did with any other repetitive but necessary task. Get it done and over with, as quickly and efficiently as possible (within regulation and safety standards, naturally), cue the montage music (there was plenty throughout cinematic history to choose from), and get to work!
Besides, what possible viewers of her personal logs, whether she became a titan of history or less than an obscure footnote, wanted to hear her insights about loading engineering equipment onto a runabout?
She was glad such a mundane task was over so she could get back to what she was born to do. Flying!
Taking the runabout Zambezi out of shuttlebay 5 was a process she’d repeated so many times it was barely worth mention, as rudimentary as one would describe a walk around the habitat ring. The breathtaking panorama of the starbase, growing in scope and shrinking in view as the Zambezi gathered safe clearance distance away from the starbase was little more than a moment’s glance through the mark one eyeball and antennae. Her focus was not on the glorious aesthetics of the multi-tonne duranium construct in serene orbit around a brilliantly colored planet. Her focus was on the delicate runabout controls, her fingers dancing in concert to make her own multi-tonned warp-capable duranium bullet navigate the local cosmos.
Arching the Zambezi back to the starbase was a simple arc to the damage site, as lazily drifting as a floating dandelion seed in the wind. No hot dogging today. They were hauling valuable repair equipment and materials. It would have been in bad form.
An easy flight for an easy day of piloting.
Perfect for the post-inebriate.
sh’Sonora: We’re approaching the damage site now. Reducing to one quarter impulse. Project landing in… one minute.
Her fingers flew on the console, missing the tactile controls of a flight stick from her old Peregrine fighter trainer. As scientifically designed and laid out as touchscreen commands claimed to be, nothing to her beat the old fashioned flight controls.
Maybe, Mi’shune thought, they should have signed out a Delta Flyer instead?
Too late for that! She cut all speed to the Zambezi as she hovered over the landing site.
sh’Sonora: Lowering to land. Switching to maneuvering thrusters. Brace yourselves, you might feel a slight bump as we affix to the station’s hull…
The drift to the landing sight required some correction. As the runabout lowered itself to within meters of the landing point, she tapped the starboard maneuvering thrusters, intending for a half-second burst to angle the runabout correctly.
Until her antennae flattened and her eyes went blank.
And a second later she found her finger pressed hard on the starboard thruster control.
sh’Sonora: What the frell? Where am I?
It was a few seconds too much. The maneuvering thrusters, spitting out plasma gas and rotating the runabout not in the perfect angle to land, but in a rather awkward, uncontrolled spin.
sh’Sonora: Frell frell frell… stop stop stop… what’s going on?!?!?!
Muscle memory failed the young andorian pilot as she had to look down and hunt for the proper button for the port maneuvering thrusters to compensate for the spin, after reaching for a control stick that, to her immediate panic, wasn’t there!
sh’Sonora: OHHHHHHH GODS!!!!!!!!
The resulting overcompensation stopped the spin, but didn’t account for the sudden lurch to port that made contact between the starbase hull and the Zambezi’s port nacelle.
It wasn’t too fast, so the damage was light, from the perspective of the starbase and the Zambezi.
To the quickly panicking andorian pilot, she felt the unfamiliar craft buckle, scrape, and groan as duranium met duranium and decided to get real intimate for several cringe-inducing seconds!
sh’Sonora: COMPUTER! STOP THE SHUTTLE!!!!!
And instantly, the runabout held its position, the groaning stopped, save for the clatter of rattling parts and the pop of duranium microwelds.
And the heavy, labored, scared out of her wits breathing of one Andorian pilot.
sh’Sonora: This isn’t my trainer shuttle. Where the frell am I?!
TBC…
Ensign Mi’shune sh’Sonora
Helm Officer
Starbase 118 - Ops Department
O240208MS1