Once More Unto the Albatross

Posted on 22 Feb 2026 @ 5:41pm by Lieutenant JG Quinn Mackie & Lieutenant JG Kelly Khan

616 words; about a 3 minute read

Mission: Epitaph
Timeline: August 2390

Quinn whistled, seeing the large orbital station and the nearby shipyards floating aboard New Bajor. "So that's it then," the newly minted Lieutenant said to Kelly as he sat at the forward operations station of the shuttlecraft Ticonderoga. It hadn't been long that he and Kelly had left the Black Hawk, having last served aboard the -A. After returning from the mission at the odd planet that tried to kill them all (what mission aboard the albatross hadn't tried to kill them?) Kelly had an opportunity to take a unique track at Command School that was hosted at the Bajor Campus. Quinn himself was able to get transferred to Deep Space Nine for a temporary assignment.

And now, here they were, being reassigned back to Harvey Geisler's command. Quinn personally had wanted to find a different ship, yet rumor had it Gamma Command had to give up five ships to the Alpha Quadrant and reduce the task groups while still keeping personnel. By submitting themselves to the personnel pool for the first available assignment, Kelly and Quinn found that the ship they'd been dealt was awfully familiar.

"It's weird to be back," Kelly said as she looked at the Akira class starship sitting in the shipyard above New Bajor. The final resting place of the original Black Hawk. "It feels like we're going back to a ghost or continue the nightmare," she said after a moment. "There's people that I miss on there....but that ship..."

"Not going to lie," Quinn remarked, "but I liked the Century better. Not as cramped, plenty of new tech to play with. Akiras are feeling older and older every year."

"They are getting older every year, Tiger," she said with a groan. "Honestly, though. Would you give him a new ship again?"

"Would it surprise you that this is actually a new Akira?" Quinn countered. "She's got holographic displays and interfaces, bioneural tech, and even her warp engines can push faster for longer. Rumor has it these uprated models are even a little more graceful with their thrusters, but I imagine you'll be the judge of that."

"It's still an Akira," Kelly muttered. "And the Albatross. It's not like we were given a choice of assignments, so let's see what the curse of the day is."

"As long as it's not time travel or multiversal trespassing, we should be fine." Quinn paused and looked up from the controls. "Right? Or would we fare better against the unknown than Jem'hadar?"

"Or maybe space dwelling cosmozoa...wait...didn't that already happen?"

"There was the planet-trapped Dolmoqour," Quinn offered, just before wincing. The terror of being used as a puppet for months had been a couple of years behind him, but the memories were still very fresh. "Or the time the ship was divided into multiple dimensions of time."

"Oh gods no," Kelly shuddered. "I got my hands tangled up in the hair of Commander Geisler's corpse in that timeline."

Quinn chuckled, thinking that if Kelly thought that was the worst of that experience in the Convergence Zone then there was no reason to provide an unpleasant reminder. "But at least we're together. Together, we can conquer the universe."

"If we can stay in the right one," she said. "But yes, we are together."

He smiled, and reached over to squeeze her hand, but only for a second before he had to return to the controls. "Message from the dockmaster. They say we're clear to approach the launch bay from the front access."

"Joy of joys," Kelly said with a laugh as she guided the shuttle in "Here we go again."

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