Thrumming the Conn

Posted on 28 May 2024 @ 8:55pm by Ensign Alan Roberts
Edited on on 29 May 2024 @ 9:28pm

717 words; about a 4 minute read

Mission: Enigma Variations
Location: Bridge, USS Cygnus
Timeline: Current

ON
Bridge, USS Cygnus


Ensign Roberts thrummed his fingers on the leading edge of the CONN console, bored nearly to tears.

Alan was not delusional; he was not the best pilot in Starfleet, but he believed himself to be a good one, at the very least. He always made sure to go over his pilot checklist, step by step, every time he sat down at this station. He made sure to log his flight plan with Lieutenant Commander Stovek prior to engaging at the Captain's whim. He made sure that all three modes of propulsion (warp drive, impulse engines and maneuvering thrusters) were at peak efficiency, and reported to Lieutenant Hartley if anything was amiss.

That all being said, surely he could do more than just sit here, on the bridge of the Starship Cygnus, putting in minute commands every so often (it turned out to be once every hour, give or take) to keep in relative position to the Freighter Bixilfiz.

While his right (and dominate) hand thrummed idly on the edge of the console, his left alternated between holding his head up in sheer boredom, and idly scanning the area as far as the Cygnus' sensors could reach. With the small visual display, he could see there was nothing out there, apart from space dust that measures in a staggering one part per trillion, and a class IV comet that was lazily meandering on by at an eye-popping forty-seven kilometers an hour. Several hours ago, he had calculated how long it would take to get to the nearest star. There were a *lot* of zero's behind the figure that had come up.

Alan sort of wished some of these Orion Pirate's buddies would show up. At least then he would be able to show his pilot's skills. Adjusting power to the maneuvering thrusters while pushing the impulse engines to their limits and using the tractor beam to hurl that comet towards one of the attacking ships, getting the ships weapons arcs in line with the enemy ships so Lieutenant Seitha could unload all of his firepower upon them. Rotating the ship in an inverted S to slide in behind the unsuspecting ships, and watching their hulks burn in the blackness of space, thrilled Alan to no end. He totally should have been a Top Gun, or a member of Gold Squad at the Academy. He would have made a damned fine combat pilot and test pilot, if only he had the opportunity.

The console beeped at him. Coming out of his daydream, he looked at the status. Was it an enemy ship coming in? A massive buildup of power in the freighter, somehow ready to attack? Did the comet change course and Roberts need to put in an outstanding evasive maneuver to avoid it? Was it a decloaking Romulan Warbird (to say nothing of the remaining Romulans being a part of the Federation now, including his friend, Ensign Veenak) bent on destroying the Cygnus?

All these thoughts raced through Alan's mind. He looked at the alert, his alarm going from red alert to condition nominal in an instant. It was only a reminder for him to run a level 1 diagnostic on his console.

Sighing reluctantly, he tapped the command to do so, and watched the automated system perform its duty. It was over in about a second. All conditions normal, as always.

How Alan wished something would happen, anything. He missed all the excitement on Antioch III during their last mission, having been relegated to backup shuttle pilot, in case the transporters went down, which they did, and in case the primary shuttles were, for whatever reason, not being utilized or otherwise engaged, which did not happen. All the excitement and fun everyone had down there that got to go, and Alan had missed it. Even Jin'Tok had gotten to go to Sto'Vo'Kor, the lucky bastard (though Alan did miss the big brute).

Roberts knew it would take about two hours to get the Freighter into tow and into warp. At least that would be interesting. Until then, he had a lot of boredom to do. He figured he should probably get to it, and get it out of the way.


OFF

Ensign Alan Roberts
Conn Officer
USS Cygnus

 

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