That whole sentence still seems foreign to my own ears, like the titles belong to someone else. Someone more worthy, perhaps. Or maybe someone who simply hasn't striven to achieve them for the past five years and then realized they were nowhere near ready for the responsibilities when they were all of a sudden thrust upon them mere hours after graduation. It took Starfleet Command a total of three hours to dispatch my new first assignment orders, complete with a sleek but slow type-9 shuttle named Antares to send me on my way. It was both an impressive and highly unexpected feat of bureaucratic prowess. I believe there's an old human saying that has something to do with lemons that is used in these circumstances. I remember hearing it at the Academy. All I can do is hope that I'm walking the path the Prophets have set out for me.
I spent the first three days of the voyage pouring over the kiloquads of information that came attached to my assignment orders. Apparently Command is just as fond of making us read as the Academy instructors were. Luckily, my new Commanding Officer decided to summarize most of the more important tidbits and compiled them into a single document. May the Prophets guide her on her true path and protect her on the journey. The required reading consisted of everything from personnel files to former mission overviews. By the end of it, I didn't want to read anything every again, but I had to admit that the USS Resolution was looking to be a very fine ship. Her crew seemed even finer, judging from what little of their personnel files I could access. While rank hath its privileges, apparently the rank of Ensign doesn't allow much remote access to the more informative files in Starfleet's databases.
The ship's specifications are quite impressive, from what I can tell, her sensors are practically unparalleled in the fleet. She's one of those Nova-class starships, designed for extensive research and exploratory missions. She might be small, but she sure has a lot to offer. I know I'm an engineer and it shouldn't be so much of a surprise to me, but it still gets me every time just how much we can cram into a small space. Yes, I understand the technology that allows for such miniaturization, but only the Prophets know why it still manages to catch me off guard time and time again.
As for the rest of the journey, I tried to find things to occupy my time. While she might have a beautiful cross-section and appear state-of-the-
The rest of my time was taken up with poking around inside the Antares' lovely propulsion systems. I managed to install a more efficient M/AM conditioner and tampered with her plasma relays a bit, but there wasn't much I could do to make her go faster. After a solid two days of tinkering, she can now sustain warp 4.5 long enough to get me to my new home. Anything faster and she might simply give up while en route. Fortunately, we're only a few minutes from transporter range and her autopilot should be good enough to land safely without my guidance. So any moment now, I'll be able to remand her onto the care of the starbase's staff. With that happy thought in mind, I should probably get back to starring out into the starry expanse around me until I arrive.
No comments:
Post a Comment