Knob shining.
Posted on 15 Jan 2014 @ 1:20pm by
Edited on on 17 Aug 2014 @ 10:41pm
568 words; about a 3 minute read
Mission:
Echoes
Location: Security department.
Timeline: December 28, 2387 || 1000 hours
Karadis was like a kid in a sweety shop when Finchley walked back into his Security office.
"Well?" Karadis asked.
"Well what?" Finchley asked, throwing himself into his over sized chair.
"Well...what's our first mission?" Karadis replied, almost exploding with anticipation.
"Oh, that" Finchley said "Knob shining" he finished.
"I beg your pardon???" Karadis replied
"Knob shining" Finchley repeated.
"I don't understand, is that some kind of euphamism for something?" Karadis said.
"Yes" Finchley said.
There was about thirty seconds of silence, then Karadis almost shouted "Well, are you going to explain it?"
"We're going to be doing the square route of nothing, nada, nil, nowt, zero, less than one" Finchley said "To explain, let me tell you what our new beloved CO said at the briefing..."
In his best impressionist Terran voice of Commander Geisler had said...
"Our first mission will not be as, shall we say, adventurous as what awaits us. Three years ago, a Federation science team was granted permission to be deployed to the Altair System to investigate a long lost race. To make a long story short, time is up and we've been ordered to retrieve them.
Every month, they've been submitting prompt updates to New Bajor. In fact, their last communique indicated they just found what they were looking for. They begged for an extension, but with piracy on the rise, especially in our AO, the Federation feels its best to pull them out for now. That's one of the reasons why we're going.
The planet boasts a strong magnetic field, so strong it renders our transporters completely useless. Any other ship could provide an engineering crew to dismantle the base and beam it aboard, but few have a staging area for support craft to collect and transport the cargo. The Black Hawk, unfortunately, will be the only ship in the quadrant with such a staging area and the ability to fend off the unexpected."
Going back to his own voice he continued "Engineering and Ops will be setting up the planning, and physical tear down/dismantling of the camp. The Medicine man and his junior quacks will obviously be cutting open frogs and chickens and the like, reading their entrails and trying to tell if the scientists are well or not, and Security...we're staying here and shining the knobs on our phasers and phaser rifles Karadis, ok?"
"He's not sending any of the Security department staff at all, not one?" Karadis asked, stupified at what she'd just heard.
"None" Finchley said simply.
"He does remember he said that piracy was on the rise in this area?" Karadis answered.
"Unless he has some sort of instant memory loss after he speaks, I imagine he'd remember he said that" Finchley replied "Anyway, I have something far more important to do than sit around here and think of the shitty mess we'll be picking up when this mission goes tits up for them and they want us to make it all better."
"And what's that?" Karadis asked, still unable to believe what she'd just heard.
"Go and collect what's in the container in cargo bay one" Finchley smiled slyly and winked.
Getting out of his seat, he headed back out of the Security department and towards Cargo bay one...
-------------------------------------
Lt Finchley Kerr
Chief of Security/Tactical
USS Black Hawk
&
CWO Shr'Nesh Karadis (PNPC)
Assistant Chief of Security/Tactical
USS Black Hawk