One More Meeting Before Holiday [Back Post]
Posted on Sun Feb 25th, 2024 @ 2:28pm by Fleet Captain Maxwell Culver & Commander Lorut Vila & Lieutenant Scott Jones
2,744 words; about a 14 minute read
Mission:
Home Sweet Home
Location: Kaitos 1 Space Station
Timeline: MD1 - 0900 hours
Max had wanted to rush down planetside and start his rather short holiday on Kaitos, but since the hotel didn’t accept early access, he figured he would take some time in one of the station’s bigger offices to send out reports and, unexpectedly, take on new crew.
As per their agreement, Vila was going to meet him in this office to meet the Group Commander, leader of their small but growing fighter wing. When the chime sounded, he expected it to be her.
“Come in,” he answered in response to the annunciator noise that indicated someone had arrived.
Vila arrived at the Captain's office on time. She was antsy to get out but she still had to do her job. She bounded in.
"Of course the Fleet sends someone just as we're prepping for a break," she said. "I'll kill that Albion the first chance I get," she said. "You know I spent four years with the Bajoran Resistance? I had a near-perfect kill record," she said, matter-of-factly. "He better hurry. Too much free time and I might start drinking again."
“As if you stopped,” Max quipped, quirking his eyebrow.
Vila tossed him a LOOK. "Actually, Dr Greene gave me something akin to Antabuse, so I am trying," she said. "It's not easy, but so far...well. It's only been a week."
Checking his PADD one final time that he was in the correct location, he strained his hearing inside to see if he could hear voices. The new group commander had one last fuss of his uniform, tucked back that one strand of hair that always flopped forward into his face, checked his breath, and pressed the chime to let the occupants inside know that someone was here, waiting for them. He wondered what kind of reception he would get, knowing that some of his fellow pilots had not always been a welcome addition to ships in light of recent events.
“Come in,” Max called, cutting off whatever biting remark Vila was going to give him. Looking up from the computer desktop hologram, Max matched the face to the new Group Commander. ’Damn,’ Max thought, smirking to himself, “he’s gonna make the rounds with this crew.’
Flicking his PaDD over to his transfer orders, Scott walked into the room and stood to attention, "Lieutenant Scott Jones, reporting in." He allowed his eyes to wander briefly around the room at the two officers in front of him, stopping for an extra beat on the Captain, 'Young for a flag officer, attractive though...very attractive,' he thought regaining his composure.
Vila fought the urge to roll her eyes. "You are twenty-five seconds late," she said. "Don't let it happen again," she said. This was what they were doing now, she'd decided. She was the cold, hard-assed one, and Max was the jovial, nice one. It was working, so far...she figured that anyone who could handle her personality was made of mettle.
Scott resisted the urge to say a great deal many comical things, he was used to this type of reaction. Whether it was yet another ship assigned a starfighter wing or not, he would have to wait and see. He allowed his face to brighten and replied, "Of course Commander, I shall add those seconds to the start or end of my first shift, whatever you deem most appropriate and beneficial." He wanted to take it further, he would regret not taking it further and setting the tone of how he would be, but this first meeting was not that. 'Snippy over seconds,' he thought, ' must make a mental note of this for all future meetings if this is how things are to go.'
Raising a perfectly manicured eyebrow, Vila flickered a look to Max. "The end," she said, simply. "And I'll check," she warned. "Captain. You had something to say?" She asked him. She sat back and sipped the now-cold Jumja tea she had brought along with her.
“First, Lieutenant Jones, at ease. If you get any more ramrod straight, people are going to hang their coats on you. As for twenty five seconds, Commander Lorut is right, you can forget them and that’s the end of that…” Max paused and smiled warmly at Vila. He’d just overridden her order to work and extra twenty five seconds. ’She’s really taking the bad cop too seriously,’ he thought.
Max motioned to the empty seat across from him. “You’ve got a few days less shore leave than the rest of the crew. We’re going to go hunting for some thieves in a few days. I hope you weren’t looking a long stay.”
Vila shot Max a LOOK and a tight smile. He'd get his later! "Indeed," she said. "Do you mind replicating me a cup of coffee? Black. Hot as Kai Winn's seat in hell," she said to Scott. "Thank you," she said, graciously. Plus, she was tired.
Max held up a hand to halt the Lieutenant. “He’s not ‘the hospitality hologram,” Max said, allowing a bit of annoyance through into his tone. Vila really was ‘in a mood’, as they say. Fortunately for her, he could sense her roiling emotions as she was fighting through her ‘night shift’. “Coffee, hot and black,” Max ordered. Turning to Scott he asked, “Would you like something, Lieutenant?!”
Scott dead eyed the commander for a moment before replying, "No thank you Captain, I'm fine for anything just now." He allowed himself to relax, thinking that whatever power struggle was going on here, either between the pair or internally for the Commander, he would not be getting involved or being the brunt of it.
Max could sense the internal confusion radiating off his new fighter commander. Just once, he decided to let the new arrival in on what was usually a gag between him and Vila. He wasn’t so sure that it was happening right now.
“This is a bit of a good cop, bad cop routine that we do as an introduction. It’s all in good fun, if you can tolerate the Commander at ‘her worst’,” Max made air quotes as he pantomimed the punctuation. “Then you’ll be more likely than not to be happy under her command when she’s in a good mood.”
“To be fair, we’re both off of our typical sleep schedules,” Max also explained.
Vila sighed. "Yes, that's true. Plus, I am just a little...tempestuous sometimes. My apologies, Lieutenant. What brings you to the Intrepid?" She stood to retrieve her coffee. She settled back in. "Welcome aboard. This should be quick, you've joined just in time for a quick foray into the local nightlife-only two day R&R, but it's desperately needed," she said. "Group commander, huh?" She said, thumbing through her PADD. "Well. This is a good ship for it; we see a lot of fun stuff out here."
"So, what you are saying is I can drop the shields?" Scott gave a small laugh, "As for what brings me here, Starfleet I guess? The last project I was working on was winding down and I believe they will be putting the fighters into full scale production at some point soon. I believe they then looked for available ships to put my team and myself back into full service."
Taking a moment to look out of the windows,"A lot of fun is definitely required after several months of refinement and testing. You get the itch to get yourself back into a cockpit and fly."
“After our last mission, and considering the unknown expanse of the Beta Quadrant to the Federation, I’m sure you’ll have plenty of time to get yourself suited up and flying, Lieutenant.”
Max sat on his desk and put his mug of coffee down next to him. “Hell, even your shore leave gets cut short,” he replied as he checked out the other man inconspicuously. Dani is either going to love him or hate him,’ Max thought while trying not to smirk at the thought.
Vila simply nodded. "Right," she said. "I have heard about the new Starfighters. New slip tech, right?" She said. Engineering wasn't really her wheelhouse, but she did find some of it interesting. "You will also find the crew to be accommodating," she said. She had picked up on the Captain's momentary interest. Dr. Campbell had mentioned that the man was going through a sort of "second puberty" and would be a bit...restless for a while. She'd done her best to not roll her eyes and make a snide comment.
"Anything else, Captain?" She asked, draining her coffee and picking up his. She finished his, as well. "Sorry. It's been a day," she said. She'd argued with Gocx that morning-they had had a small issue about the shore leave schedule. She'd had to pull out the bitchy, "I'm the XO" card. Men. Too headache.
“I think that’s up to Scott. Do you have any questions for us?” Max asked the man. Max could see a small look of surprise cross Scott’s face. “Oh, we don’t stand too hard on tradition. Captain will do fine while we’re on duty, but otherwise I prefer to be called bull my name.”
Vila nodded. She never called him "Max," though-far too friendly. He'd called her Vila once-and only once-and she'd disabused him of that immediately. In her culture, it was only appropriate for first names in your family or your spouse. No one else, except maybe a VERY close friend. She looked to the Pilot. "All I ask is that you have a duty roster to me by the end of the week," she said. "I do schedules Sundays," she said.
"No additional questions, just one day when I have settled into the position, I would like to speak to you both about possibly transferring my personal fighter to the ship?" Scott said with a smile, "That is if it gets released as a working production model and not a test article, I finally managed to get the settings and the seat position right just before the entire project was green-lit for mass production." Looking down at his PADD, Scott looked at the Commander, "As for duty roster, I have a rough plan I can submit to you now based on currently available information of what pilots will be joining the Intrepid also. I think for the first batch, numbers are being kept small."
Vila nodded. "Excellent," she said. Less work for her tomorrow. "Tell us about your fighter," she said. Vila was interested in flying to a small degree-she liked danger, mostly
"Valkyrie class fighter, third iteration, or simply the mark 3," Scott began, relaxing into himself, allowing some indulgence in his passion and what had been a passion project of his, "small, one-person fighters, with the option of a passenger seat that pack quite a punch. Pulse phaser cannons, and micro torpedo launchers, we had also worked on an additional single-mounted weapons slot that could be changed out depending on the mission. We had experimented with a tetryon-based cannon but also additional sensor equipment for recon missions. Corners like a dream with the new wing-swept design. The warp speed was compromised to make up for some of this additionality, but not greatly. Then again, we never planned on the fighters being sent on extended solo missions." He stopped to take a breath and let the information set in, before adding one final thing he remembered, "They are also smaller than most standard attack shuttles, so they take up less hangar space, freeing up more room in the shuttle bays and in any repair bays."
Max felt like the pilot had just done a warp speed pass over his head, but had latched onto the one thing he thought he might be able to help with. “I could requisition the fighter for you.” Max looked at the fighter before continuing, “If Starfleet has completed the test run and has locked down the production schedule, there shouldn’t be any need of them keeping the first fighter in existence.”
“If anything, the fighter is so attuned to your needs during testing that pushing it out to any other starship besides Intepid. At the very least, it’s something I can look into,” Max said, still looming down from atop his desk.
Suddenly, he realized it could be viewed as an Alpha-male dominance issue, so he pulled his legs up and sat more like he was meditating than looming. Besides being less dominant, it also helped relieve the pressure on his rear end and knees. “I’ll put the requisition in once we’re done here,” Max mentioned, specifically for Lorut, she didn’t need anything else to add to her list. “I think the USS Trailblazer is meant to join us before our next major push into the Beta Quadrant. She can ferry it from,” Max paused as he realized he either didn’t catch the shipyards or Scott hadn’t said, “Where is she?”
"Currently wasting away in a hangar in Deep Space 4," Scott replied, "which is why I brought it up now... it is a bit out of the way and could take some time to get here." He paused for a moment, before continuing, trying to be lighthearted, "And my fighters have always been 'he's'," he beamed, "This one playfully being referred to as the Ex-Boyfriend... in and out of your life in a flash, leaving nothing but disaster behind."
Max laughed, thinking back to how close Dani had come to being “the ex-boyfriend”. It wasn’t really a feeling he liked. “Well, the Trailblazer is coming straight from the Andoria Prime Shipyards. She should be able to make a quick diversion from her path through to here. Besides, I’m sure Captain King would love an opportunity to kick up the QSD as an excuse to make our rendezvous in time.” Max smiled, slightly crinkling the skin around his eyes. ’Laugh lines, not wrinkles,’ he reminded himself vainly. ’In about nine hundred years.’ his practicality then reminded him.
Vila listened to the men bantering back and forth. "I'll just leave you two to your...whatever this is," she said, sighing deeply, but standing up to use the replicator once more. "Anyone want anything?" She asked. "I need to see Rena in fifteen minutes, Captain," she said. That was true, at least.
Max nodded at the mention of Vila’s counseling appointment. “If you’re replicating and the coffee’s still hot,” he quipped.
Vila gave him a look, but then remembered that she HAD finished his, so with a sigh, she replicated a cup for him, too. "Excuse me, Lieutenant. It was nice to meet you; I will see you later. I usually cover Delta shift, so maybe I won't, but it was nice nonetheless," the Bajoran said. It was the best she had. She settled back in, but tapped her foot as she waited for Max to wrap it up.
Max finally slid off the obsidian surface of the table and stood. “Alright…Commander Lorut has an appointment,” he said, taking the mug she now offered to him. “And I’m sure you’ll likely stop by to see your birds, Lieutenant. So unless there’s something else, consider yourselves dismissed,” Max finished.
"I shall consider myself dismissed then," Scott replied, "and I look forward to working with both of you and making something of our fighter wing."
Max watched as the two left his office. He turned his attention to the communications they had begun receiving from Kaitos. He was to be summoned to the Council of Elders, not entirely unexpected. In fact, he had just been talking to Vianola about the matter. The second was from his family and just how soon would he be coming to see them. Finally, a letter from his betrothed asking to meet with him ASAP.
’So much for vacation,’ he thought a bit glumly. He was going to be busier on this shore leave than if he had just stayed home. What he wouldn’t give for a call from the Helivans. His saving grace was the fighter mission.
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