Command Decisions

Posted on 31 Aug 2016 @ 4:09pm by Commodore Harvey Geisler & Commander Thiago Teixeira & Lieutenant Commander Temerant Bast

1,929 words; about a 10 minute read

Mission: Click Three Times
Location: Briefing Room One
Timeline: MD 7 || 0900 hours

Having just returned from his external tour, Harvey walked down the Deck Six Corridor. His left hand gripped an isolinear chip which he'd taken from the shuttle's computer core. Even though the Black Hawk's computer was only partially operational, the independent viewing screens in the Briefing Room would still be able to read and play the video footage on the chip.

As soon as he'd come on board, he immediately summoned Commander Teixeira and Commander Bast to join him in Briefing Room One to review the footage and to determine their next steps. All he knew for certain was that they couldn't stay too much longer in this nebula. The Consortium would come looking for their ships soon, and O'Connell had made it clear that they wouldn't send anyone to look for the Black Hawk. Harvey wouldn't expect the Commodore to even think about the Black Hawk again. After all, the Command Staff had to look out for the remnants of the Task Force, not one ship sent on what could have been a fool's errand.

At least the rumors were true.

And Harvey would make the Consortium pay for the souls sacrificed on the Black Hawk. Between the Yolvandan Outbreak and this mission, he'd lost too many people.

Still thinking about the losses, he entered the Briefing Room and immediately approached the viewer to call up the video he took.

Between known casualties and crew that was still listed as missing, the process of assessing and getting the Black Hawk back up and running was taking its toll on everyone. This, unfortunately, included Thiago. It wasn't until he was summoned by Geisler that the Brazilian realized that he hadn't eaten anything since before the meeting in Rykov's office the previous day. Turning command of his team to Chief Rogers, Teixeira pulled a ration pack out from a storage compartment and headed for deck six.

When he arrived at the briefing room, he saw that the Captain was already present. "Oi," Thiago said, walking into the room tiredly and dropping into a chair.

Harvey turned to see Thiago enter and take a seat. Noting the ration pack in his hand and the expression on the man's face, it was easy to tell that he'd been working non stop since the previous day. Like the rest of the crew, Thiago's contributions were not unnoticed. After all, between having partial power and several working systems, the Black Hawk appeared to be quickly returning to normal. "Commander," Harvey greeted.

Tearing the corner off the ration pack and gnawing off a big bite of the bar, Thiago sighed as he chewed. "How are you holding up?" he asked.

Harvey's eyes wandered to the ration bar in Thiago's hand, thinking that at this moment, he was hungry. He didn't even remember the last time he ate. "About as well as I can be, I guess," he replied, moving to stand next to one of the chairs at the table. "You?"

He was pretty sure the look at his face was enough to answer Geisler's inquiry. The captain looked run down too. "I can share," Teixeira said, offering the ration bar. "It's not that good, but it gets the job done."

"No, no," Harvey replied. The last thing he wanted to do was eat someone else's meal. Besides, he could just as easily pick up a ration bar from Administration when he was done. "Seems like the crew feels just like the both of us, if not worse."

"They probably do. They've been working very hard. Short staffed. Heavy workload. Long hours. A recipe for exhausted crew." He tore the wrapper of the ration bar back some more, exposing more of the rough-textured meal replacement. "You've got a good crew here."

"We've," Harvey quietly corrected. Clearing his throat, he spoke louder, "We've got a good crew here. In all my life, I've never seen such a determined bunch, even after being knocked down so many times. What's the old proverb, the righteous fall and get up seven times? At least, I think it's something like that."

Thiago managed a sly grin. "I've never exactly been righteous. But I like how that sounds." He took another bite off the rations. "A união faz a força," he said between chews.

Harvey grunted at the comment about being righteous. He hadn't thought himself as much of a righteous man either, but when it came to the Consortium, there didn't seem to be a middle ground here. "What's that mean?" he asked Thiago, referring to the man's last statement.

"A little saying from home. 'Our union makes us stronger.'"

The door to the briefing room opened once again, and Bast walked in, looking down at a data padd. "I don't care what order you do it in," he said, speaking into his combadge, "but if you don't beam the water out of the swimming pool before restoring gravity in that section, you'll be mopping it out of Talon's for the next month."

He tapped his combadge to close the channel before dropping into a chair with a heavy sigh. "Gravity went out again on Deck 5," he explained. "For some reason the pool was still full, and now we've got about two thousand cubic meters of water floating around Deck 5."

He sighed, and put down his data padd, and looked at the other officers. "And how was your day?"

"About to get better," Harvey replied, unable to remove all of the sarcasm from his tongue. "I just finished a bit of an external inspection. More of a tour really." He returned to the viewscreen and called up the battle-scarred Cochrane. "The Cochrane is flyable, and they're a bit ahead of us on repairs."

He tapped another button to cue it up to the other Intrepid. "The Chimera, however, is a completely different story."

Bast looked over the images, and let out a whistle. "Looks like Walsh's fighters did quite a number on her," he commented.

"I'm no engineer," Harvey said, placing both hands on his hip and turning towards both men. "Compromised hull, exposed field coils, massive internal damage. Unless I'm mistaken, the Chimera won't be going anywhere any time soon."

Bast walked over to the viewscreen and replayed a section of the footage, where the shuttle flew over the Chimera's spine. He overlayed a molecular scan of the structural integrity field, and highlighted a few areas.

"Her back's broken," he said, indicating stress lines along the spine. "She's not going anywhere. She'd have to be towed to a drydock to be spaceworthy again."

"We can divide her crew between Cochrane and us and tow her in then," Teixeira offered. He looked at Bast. "Could the two ships make it back to Unity with Chimera safely?"

Bast shook his head. "Not in the shape we're in currently," he said. "It would be too much of a power drain to tow a ship that size at warp, and we're struggling to maintain power in key areas such as it is. And the Cochrane can't tow a ship its own size over such a distance."

Harvey nodded as Bast confirmed what Harvey had been thinking. "Well, we can't leave it. Any Federation ship is a treasure trove for pirates or the like." Harvey looked back to the screen and sighed. "Based on our current repair schedule, how long will it be until we can get underway?"

"I'd say about six to eight hours," replied Bast. "We still need to finish inspecting the Warp core, and the magnetic constrictors need to be realigned. Impulse engines also took a beating, but they can sustain half-impulse power until we clear the nebula."

The Captain nodded again. "The Cochrane will more than likely take the same amount of time. Eight hours it is. We'll salvage what we can from the Chimera and we'll scuttle it before leaving. I'll oversee that. Commander Teixeira, I'm going to place you in command of the Cochrane until we return to Unity. This Consortium business decimated that ship, so you'll need to come up with a command crew."

"Thank you sir," Thiago responded. Having served for nearly a decade as a First Officer, he'd been in command of ships before. But never one of his own. That the Cochrane was an Intrepid-class ship was a plus. He'd served on the Intrepid-class Blackthorne for 7 years, first as Chief Science and Second Officer and then as Executive Officer. "We're fortunate that a lot of the Cochrane's senior staff are loyal to Starfleet. Even so, I'd like Commander Bast with me. He's a known quantity, someone I can trust. Assuming you can get by without him Captain."

Harvey fought a frown. He understood Thiago's reasoning, but he wasn't terribly thrilled about being without a couple key senior officers for a few days. Then again, they were only talking about a couple days here. The Black Hawk could manage. "Very well," Harvey agreed. "Mister Bast's own experience with the Consortium should prove useful to the crew of the Cochrane and should make the trip uneventful."

Harvey then turned his attention to the Second Officer, "I don't want to take you away from the Black Hawk just yet though. Between everything that we need to do over the next few hours, I need you to keep the repair efforts here moving. I'll personally oversee the salvage process and I need to keep someone from the command team on board the ship."

Bast nodded. "I can draw up a list of things we might want to salvage from the Chimera," he suggested. "And there's no denying that reassigning the Chimera's crew to the Black Hawk and to the Cochrane will also speed up the repairs on both ships."

"I wouldn't count on them just yet," Harvey pointed out. "Between salvage duty, and giving them some time to get what they can from their quarters, there's a lot to do in eight hours. There's also something else," he said, turning back to the screen and pulling up the video footage of the rift. "This is what's left, I assume, of the Valdore. As soon as the computer's back to full capacity, I'll have Commander Casey take a look at some scans I took."

Bast pulled up the details of the scans. As Wilem Bast, he'd been one of Trill's leading quantum physicists. Not all of Wilem's knowledge had survived the Joining, but he could handle the basics.

"It's a subspace rift," he said. "Tricobalt devices are known to be capable of producing subspace disruptions."

"Especially when you toss in a quantum singularity," Harvey replied. "I think when this is all said and done, we have something to come back to."

The Captain cleared the screen and removed the isolinear chip. "Mister Teixeria, I'll need your help in dividing the crew from the Chimera. I know all ships suffered great loss, and I'd like to see the bulk of that crew come over here. Don't shortchange the Cochrane though."

Thiago nodded his understanding.

"Anything else we need to discuss?" Harvey asked.

"Not that I can think of, sir. Bast?"

Harvey waited a bit for a response, and after not hearing one, Harvey nodded to both men. "Let's get to it." Tucking the chip into the palm of his hand, Harvey led the way out of the conference room.

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