Charting Our Way...

Posted on 28 Feb 2021 @ 10:13am by Commodore Harvey Geisler & Lieutenant JG Charles McCullen
Edited on on 16 Mar 2021 @ 9:51pm

2,501 words; about a 13 minute read

Mission: Extinction
Location: Stellar Cartography
Timeline: Mission Day 2 at 1000

Harvey sat behind his desk, taking a close look at the sector star charts. Task Group Belvedere had been assigned to patrol multiple sectors scarcely visited by Federation starships. Aside from Gavara and Starbase Unity, Harvey was unfamiliar with most of these systems. The starcharts seemed both incomplete and outdated, which would make their job even harder.

The Captain rose from his chair and tapped his badge. "Geisler to McCullen. Meet me in Stellar Cartography."

Charlie looked up from the helm, tapped a series of commands to have the computer request a replacement officer and then tapped his comm badge. "Aye sir, I'll be there shortly."

A replacement arrived shortly after and the young lieutenant headed for the turbolift and Stellar Cartography. He had a good idea what the captain wanted to discuss, the star charts for the sector were at best outdated, at worst practically blank. It made travelling anywhere at warp tricky, relying on the navigational sensors to pick up on what was ahead of them was like driving through a blizzard.

A few minutes later, the helmsman walked into the large space and approached the captain. "Sir?"

The Stellar Cartography lab was a large cylindrical room with a floating platform in the middle of it. As soon as McCullen joined Geisler on the platform, the connecting ramp slid back into the wall, leaving them floating. "Good morning, Mister McCullen," Harvey greeted. He was sitting behind the control console where two people would normally peruse the starcharts together. "We're going to be taking a close look at these sectors here." He tapped a few controls and soon a map of three sectors appeared on the holographic wall in front of them. "Know much of anything about this area?"

"Not much, captain." Charlie responded, sliding into the seat next to the captain, "long-range sensors have detected one system so far, here," he tapped a few commands to highlight the system, "a red dwarf with eleven planets and two asteroid belts. Aside from that at first glance, the area seems, uh... pretty empty, sir. But we've only just scratched the surface with scans, so far."

Captain Geisler found himself thankful that the Black Hawk's sensors had been properly reset since the sabotage efforts from a couple months before. Early in the ship's shakedown cruise, the saboteur picked the wrong time to experiment the sensors, blinding the Black Hawk to an ion storm which it soon dropped out of warp and entered. The damage from that moment caused a chain of events even Captain Geisler wanted to forget. "How long do you think it'll take to scan all three sectors?"

"Hmm," Charlie stalled while he did some guestimation in his head. Where science, tactical and navigation intersected was a bit of a grey area, the three departments had different goals and while everyone was professional and polite, there was definitely some friction between priorities. Helm wanted to get a navigational picture, highlight systems, dangers, wandering objects, anything that could hinder a ship's passage, but science wanted a deeper picture, stopping for every pocket of gas, cloud of dust and field of radiation. Tactical's priority was planets, moons and asteroids, hunting for power signatures and looking into every sensor ghost, shadow and anomaly for pirates. All three were valid, but balancing them and compromising to give everyone some of what they wanted without neglecting the others slowed everything down. "It's hard to say exactly, sir." He postulated, "we're running now at about a search grid every two hours, depending on object density and spacial composition... at that pace, five, maybe six days?"

It was Harvey's turn to say, "Hmm." Five or six days of scans was only enough to get a rudimentary baseline, and he knew Commander Djinx and his astronomers would want at least a couple of weeks to study certain areas to look for any stellar drift and anomalies. "And as good as our sensors are, the best we'll be able to walk away with is something that looks like a toddler's finger painting. We're not going to be able to sit still and scan either, especially since we're assigned to patrol. Have you any early thoughts on a pattern?"

"Sir..." Charlie paused, sure of what he wanted to say but unsure how to say it. "We're looking for a pirate base, and that could be on any planet, moon or asteroid in any of the systems in these sectors. It's not so much looking for a needle in a haystack as looking for a needle in a giant stack of other very similar needles. If we went system to system, scanning every single one, we'd be here for months." The young lieutenant frowned for a second, his brain churning with possibilities. "The best we can do, I think, is plot a course something like this..." The helmsman pushed a series of buttons, selecting waypoints that ran through all three sectors in a rough zig-zag, "leaving out brown and red dwarf, and pulsar systems, that allows us to scan as many star systems likely to have stable planets and asteroid belts as possible in five or six days. If we don't find what we're looking for we plot another course..." he entered a second set of waypoints on a different zig-zag, "and repeat until we hit paydirt."

The Captain nodded slowly, looking at the different waypoints that had materialized on the screens in front of them. "There's definitely no way we're going to accomplish this inside a couple weeks," he said finally. "We have to also consider their mindset. Already they've activated sleeper agents inside Starfleet. Hell, they got onto the Black Hawk for crying out loud. They've got access, they're resourceful, and we also know they're not afraid. I don't think we can rule out red dwarves and pulsars." He looked at the screens for a moment, before settling on something off to his right, across Charlie's field of view. "That's an unusual anomaly there. What can you tell me about it?"

"Uh..." Charlie entered the commands to zoom in on the anomaly as his brain recovered the required information. "it's a subspace inversion, the gravimetric distortions around it make it hard to get clear readings, but it appears to be natural, roughly circular and about nine trillion kilometres in diameter. From what we can tell, the apace around the distortion field is pretty unstable, I've marked it as a navigational hazard."

Harvey's eyes quickly studied the readouts. He was no astrophysicist, but he imagined that there were at least a dozen people on board that would want to get a closer look at that inversion. "Nine trillion," he said softly, temporarily awestruck. "We might want to include that in a future patrol though. Get some good baseline scans and establish an operational perimeter around it. That'll leave the door open for a qualified science vessel to follow up for further examination."

"That'd be, uh... nice," the helmsman responded. He was a little confused, the captain was talking about science scans and exploration, but as far as Charlie knew they were supposed to be going hell-for-leather looking for pirates. But it was not his place to question such things. He wondered if there could be two birds on offer with a single stone. "They'd have to be mad to hide in there," he postulated, "but it would be possible if you had the gravitational eddies mapped well enough."

"Until we know more about the pirates, I'm assuming that they're quite resourceful," Harvey observed. "Just a few weeks ago, we were staring down a Saber-class ship owned by Kellinor. It may have been obtained legally, but still, that's a large starship for a civilian privateer. The Consortium pushed out a lot of good officers too. What's the expression? Leave no stone unturned?" The Captain sighed. "Still, even a subspace inversion is worth cataloging. We might be looking for pirates, but we're still Starfleet. We can't be forgetting our primary mission."

"Yes sir," Charlie nodded, "I never imagined I'd see a starship in the hands of pirates. I mean, shuttles and runabouts, and old decommissioned junkers, yeah, but an active class of starship? It makes me wonder just how much power has seeped out of Starfleet, in people and material." The helmsman looked up at his CO and blinked, realizing after the fact that he'd said more than he'd intended to. "I mean, uh... I just worry about what's out there, sir."

Harvey sighed and shook his head. "First of all, Lieutenant, let's get something straight. I highly value what my senior officers say and what they think. Never apologize in moments like this. And, you have every right to be concerned. I share many of your concerns, and I probably have more than what's on your list. What matters to me is that we find the source of the hemorrhage, and we seal it."

Charlie frowned, the words of his father ran unbid through his mind. "Listen here, Charles. You're my son and I love you, but I've got to be honest, you're just not Starfleet material. You're a great pilot, nobody can deny that, but unless you learn to speak up for yourself and stop being so damned skittish you'll never be suited for the uniform."
At the time it had seemed like an attack on his character, a challenge he'd risen to and, partly because he'd dreamed of doing it and partly to rub his old man's nose in it, he'd entered Starfleet academy and made it. But there was truth in those words, he'd learned from painful experience, and speaking up for himself remained his biggest challenge.

"Yes captain," he replied after a pause, " I, uh... I think, maybe, we should make scanning the inversion a priority. If I were a pirate, I'd think it was a good place to hide... I mean, long-range scans are unreliable and there's got to be some stable pockets in a nebula that size..."

Harvey nodded in response. "Since we're talking about a massive anomaly, this is one time where I think we should rely first on probes. We've got twenty four class fours aboard. I'm thinking we could send two or three to the inversion and analyze their telemetry before they're consumed. It'll give us a better idea of what to expect before warping in unannounced. What do you think?"

"For an anomaly that big I think probes are a good idea. They could at least find us, or, uh... whoever investigates the thing, a safe spot to warp in to."

"Excellent," the Captain's eyes began to scan the map yet again. "Any other points of interest we need to consider?"

The helmsman hit some commands to zoom the map back out to the sector they had been assigned. "Yes sir, long-range scans of the sector and Federation records have identified a couple of planetary systems, here..." he indicated Argratha, "The Argratha system, a G-Type star with one inhabited planet, former Dominion territory, visited last in 2372 according to the records, and here..." he indicated the Saltah'na system, "not much is known about this one, it's a K-class star with five planets but that's all I know." He zoomed the map out again, "I, uh... don't doubt there's a bunch of stuff we just don't know about yet. That's why we're searching in a grid pattern, right?"

Harvey nodded, acknowledging the Lieutenant's question. "Pretty much. There's a lot about the Gamma Quadrant we don't know, even after almost thirty years of exploration. There's a lot to see and learn out here on the frontier. As long as we don't find another Convergence Zone, we'll be all right." The Captain looked at the Saltah'na system and the meager description the computer provided. "Part of me wishes we could just see it all at once, but there's probably no harm in smelling the roses once in a while."

"Before I came to the Black Hawk," Charlie began, frowning to himself as he considered his words. He was worried about overstepping his bounds, but the captain's encouragement to share his opinions nudged him onwards. "For the most part. my time in Starfleet was very, uh... normal. I mean, routine... just like they described it at the academy. Wake up, go to work, free time, sleep, repeat. I had, uh, I mean... I never realized things were so rough, out beyond the core systems, it seems like all that happens out here is... is strife and conflict." The helmsman resisted the urge to look down at his feet and instead, fixed his eyes on the captain's face in spite of his impulse. "And... it seems like this ship has gone from one crisis to another, I mean, uh... from what I've heard from people who've been aboard for a while, you've all been through hell. I think, maybe... the Black Hawk could use some time to smell the roses."

The Captain grunted and then chuckled. "Been through hell. That's putting it mildly. Some of our adventures have been exciting, but we have become specialists in crisis management. Starfleet likes us to practice that skill often, unfortunately. There's a lot of us that say we'd take all of that for a walk down Routine Lane, but I think we'd all get bored of it eventually. The Gamma Quadrant acts like a frontier when really it's just a power vacuum. Both Starfleet and the Dominion have seen massive losses in the last few years, much like Starfleet and the Klingons did around the Orion Syndicate more than a hundred years ago. It's a different era with different people, and we'll overcome it eventually." He looked back at the map. "But I can promise you one thing. We'll definitely stop to smell the roses more often. And, hopefully, we'll come across an adventure that doesn't turn into a crisis."

"We can but hope, sir." Charlie smiled, that was what Starfleet was all about, wasn't it? Hope for the best, prepare for the worst? It seemed like this crew was prepared for anything, they just had to hope.

"That we can." Harvey smiled as well, though he was still looking out at the projected map. "Anything else of note? Or is it time for me to leave you to lock this all in?"

"I think that's everything, sir." Charlie concluded, "at least until we get better scans of some of the blank bits."

"Wonderful." He clapped a hand on the pilot's shoulder, tapped it twice, and then rose from his seat. "Then I'll leave you to it. Good work, Lieutenant."

"Thank you, sir," Charlie replied, he had the vague feeling that there had been some kind of breakthrough in his relationship with his captain, but for the moment he couldn't pin down exactly what it was. For the moment, he had a lot of work to focus on building a series of possible courses that would take the ship where the captain wanted her to go.

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