SET: Rojar II Atmospheric Survey (Part 1 of 2)

Posted on 09 Apr 2013 @ 6:15am by Petty Officer 3rd Class Kareel Gan & Petty Officer 3rd Class Justin Smoak (KIA) & Chief Warrant Officer 3 Lamar Darius
Edited on on 09 Apr 2013 @ 1:34pm

2,274 words; about a 11 minute read

Mission: Episode 03 - Frontier
Location: Rojar II - Shuttlecraft Vincenzo
Timeline: MD5 0700 Hours

ON:

Gan wound herself down from the top of the shuttlecraft, balancing on the palms of her hand. First one leg, then the other followed, til her feet were on the ground. She patted the Vincenzo encouragingly and stuck a coil spanner back into her pocket. "You'll do just fine." A few moments later, the hatch to the forward-ventral docking bay opened to reveal the rest of the away team compliment.

Smoak entered into the bay, still feeling encumbered and slowed - like a damned turtle. Why the hell did Stone insist they had to use all this damned gear anyway? The idea of it was as crazy as he was - and after yesterday, everyone damned well knew just how looney a tune that was. He almost smiled to himself, thinking that soon that crazy bastard was going to get the boot and that would put an end to all of that.

But in the meantime, armor? New rifles? For an atmo survey? What the hell was he supposed to be protecting the team from anyway, stray cumulus clouds? Angry cirrus formations? This was ridiculous. "Hey," Smoak said to Gan. "Wanna trade jobs for about three years?"

Gan took in the armor and updated weaponry. Her eyes inspected the phaser, then the armor, rounding off back to the shuttle. "I've got to admire your ethic," she said warmly, her lips separating into a broad smile.

"Shut it," Smoak said. "Bad enough I've forced into this crap, I don't need to put up with crap from others about it. Don't you have a flight list or something to complete?"

"It's just you and me. I'm not sure why they didn't think to bring along a scientist." The Trill tipped her head sideways. "I guess we'll be learning about clouds. We're waiting on a Lieutenant Ral."

"Wait, what? We don't even have some sort of cloud or atmo specialist on this mission and I have to dress up like a frikken Paranoid Turtle?" Smoak felt like hitting something, or kicking something or...shooting something. But no chance of any of that happening. Stone would hear of it, or watch it on the security feeds - or just frelling imagine it happened - and then Smoak would be in for it for sure. "That can't be true. No frelling scientists on this 'mission'?"

Ah, youth. "Nope. None. It might be the pilot's job," she mused, realizing that it made sense for any shuttle pilot to understand the mechanics of atmosphere. "Barring that, we could take holoimages." She held up the small camera around her neck. "Unless you have a hidden knack for nephology."

"Hey, I ain't some sort of freak that messes with dead people!" Smoak said, his face turning red at the accusation he had sexual relations with the dead. "You better just watch what kind of things you're saying because I don't think anybody'd blame me if I popped you one for that or not! And I'm in the mood to be popping someone for being inflammatory!"

She observed him sputtering, red and loud. "Nephology, dear," Gan reiterated. "The study of clouds. Context is everything, friend."

"Yeah, well, still," he said, turning away and finding a wall to lean against until they could load up and be on their way. How stupid was this? Not to even have a scientist aboard the mission? Were they expecting him to run scans and surveys? He didn't have a frelling clue! He didn't sign up to be a scientist, he signed up to be Security. Maybe he should have just bit the bullet and joined the Marines. Kiwosk seemed to think it was an okay gig.

The hatch to the docking port once again swished open, only this time it was a large red-collared man who climbed down the ladder and into the assembly area. After receiving yet another last minute notice on his PADD several minutes ago regarding a change in flight control personnel, Lamar had hastily assembled and made his way from the aft shuttle bay to the forward docking port where the Waverider shuttlecraft Vincenzo was housed. With his mission kit slung over his shoulder and utility belt full of various items, he approached two gold-collared personnel. One was a tall, red-haired Trill woman who he thought was strikingly attractive, and the other was a heavily armed man who looked like he had come straight out of Robocop, one of Lamar's favorite 20th century holofilms. "Sorry I'm late." he said as he came to a stop next to them. "Lamar Darius, support craft pilot." he said as he introduced himself to them and held out his large hand for each of them to shake.

Gan lifted both hands in greeting and then shook his. She inspected him thoughtfully. "Something happened to Ral, I take it."

Lamar gave a light shrug of his shoulders. "No idea. I got the call from Commander Holliday about ten minutes ago, no explanation. I didn't bother asking." he replied, seemingly not too concerned with what happened to the half-Klingon flight control officer.

"Great," Smoak muttered, "another not a scientist. What's the point of being a science vessel if we don't have scientists doing the science stuff?" he asked trying to adjust the armor so it wasn't chafing as much.

Frowning at the junior crewman in front of him, Lamar couldn't help but shake his head at the massive amounts of body armor which adorned the security officer. "No idea, petty officer. I don't make the away team rosters." he answered. "And why are you wearing all of that?" he proceeded to ask.

"You try working for a guy nuttier than a squirrel commune, see what you have to wear on atmospheric surveys," Smoak said, tired of the jokes about it already. If this was part of the crap that was necessary for the TRT, then he was already rethinking his desire to be a part of it. The only upside was that it could look impressive in his service record. As long as nobody outside the ship poked too deep into what it actually meant.

Gan popped open the door and gestured inside. She smiled at them both and climbed into the craft. "We should be able to at least do something. This has a standard sensor set-up? We can just look at the components of the atmosphere. Oxygen, all that. Maybe..." she bit her tongue, "the weather, anything that would be relevant for anyone who goes down there?" the engineer asked, looking back at Darius. "They have to know who they sent out here, so they'll get the work they're asking for, right?"

The warrant officer climbed inside the craft and placed his kit in one of the overhead compartments, then sank down into the comfortable pilot's chair. "Yea, this baby has a pretty solid sensor suite." he answered to the Trill woman. "The planet we are surveying is a gas supergiant. Class S, I believe, with an atmosphere that should be composed mostly of hydrogen and helium. We should be equipped to collect all of the data we need." he added, reciting what he had studied in his earlier briefing.

"Excellent." Gan pulled her holoimager from around her neck and set it off to the side. She planned on taking some images of the spectacular sights once they got through to the edge of the planet.

As if walking and standing weren't bad enough, there really wasn't room for Smoak to stand in this get up, much less stand up straight. But sitting seemed even worse. Still, the other security officer didn't seem to be having problems. Smoak realized he was just starting to explore the depths of how much he disliked her.

Lamar glanced back behind him to make sure the overloaded security officer was inside of the craft, then tapped an overhead button to close the hatch. His fingers began to fly across the consoles in front of him and the inside of the large shuttlecraft came to life with a bright display of colors as he began the preflight sequence. He proceeded to activate the shuttle's internal comm system and gave his fun, personalized, introductory message to the crew.

"Ladies and gentleman, welcome aboard Vincenzo...this is your pilot speaking." he began as his voice boomed unnecessarily loud throughout the craft, "Today, we are scheduled to conduct an atmospheric survey of Rojar II with an estimated flight time of six hours. We will be departing momentarily so please make sure your seat belts are fastened and your tray tables are in their upright and locked positions." he continued as he recited some of his favorite 20th century holofilm scenes. "If you feel you need to vomit at any point during the mission, the lavatory can be found directly behind you in the aft compartment. Please flush after use." he finished, then cut off the comm system.

Gan shifted in her seat in anticipation, but kept quiet while they went through the prelaunch sequence. She looked over to Smoak, who did not seem nearly as interested.

Smoak sighed as he tried to figure a way to sit that was at least semi-comfortable. He didn't think there was one. Of course everyone else was having just a grand old time. "Any idea what we should be doing?" Smoak asked, staring at the LCARS panel in front of him. "There an 'Atmospheric Survey for Dummies' instructional manual or something?"

"Do you know how to operate shuttle sensors?" Gan asked Smoak, pulling down her console from over her head. "I'm thinking we scan the planet and its surroundings and take notes of whatever is there," the Trill said sensibly. "The scanners should do most of the work."

Lamar pressed a button and one of the side compartments next to his seat opened to present him with several PADDs. Procuring two of them from the drawer, he quickly queued up a set of instructions for the craft's sensor arrays as well as atmospheric survey protocols. "Here, read this. I think it should help." he said to both Gan and Smoak as he handed each of them a PADD. The warrant officer wasn't very skilled with scientific equipment, but the instructions provided seemed fairly straight forward. Besides, his job was mainly to pilot the craft while the rest of his team managed the sensor suites. The data would no doubt be linked in real-time to Galileo's science personnel, which would help eliminate the added stress of interpreting data with which they weren't very familiar.

"Well, this will be handy, thanks," Smoak said as he flipped through the information. He wished it were 'dumbed down' a bit more but he could at least find a way to muddle through it now.

Lamar finished the Waverider's preflight sequence then turned to the others in the spacious cabin. "All right, we're all set to depart. Just received clearance to undock." he informed them. "Hold on." he warned, then pressed the release control to un-clamp the large shuttle from her mothership. A strong jolt rocked the craft as they came free from Galileo, after which Lamar activated the RCS thrusters in short controlled bursts to put some distance from the Nova Class before engaging the impulse engines. "We're clear." he finally called out, then brought main propulsion online and set a course towards the enormous gas giant.

Fortunately, as an engineer with a few lifetimes of experience under her belt, Gan managed to intuit the most basic functions without looking at the PADD, though she did take it. She'd spent most of her time in the Trill spacefleet repairing civilian cargo ships, so the small differences in the systems layouts occupied her while she tweaked them out. After a while she started browsing through the PADD. "All right, let's see how this goes. What's our estimation to entering orbit?" she slid down one of the controls and maneuvered it to the right, activating a sequence of lights which popped up a mapping display. Useful. A few pieces of debris were floating a few meters behind them, according to the console. She took a break to look at the PADD once more before she pressed a sequence of buttons intending to get the terminal to tell her what they were composed of. "Meteoroids. Stone. Iron, nickel, hmm. Looks like this works pretty well." She smiled.

It only took a matter of minutes before Vincenzo approached the giant gas ball, and Lamar slowly throttled down the impulse engines as they were captured by the planet's gravity well. "I'm establishing low orbit at 30,000 kilometers, then I'll cut the engines and take us into the atmosphere." he said.

When the shuttlecraft reached the planet's periapsis, he once again activated the RCS thrusters and swung the front of the craft around so that it was facing the retrograde vector. His fingers delicately manipulated the flight controls and he burned the impulse engines for a few short moments in order to establish an elliptical orbit. He repeated the same procedure at the planet's apoapsis once they reached the far side of the gas giant, and finally they were in a nearly-perfect circular orbit. "Standard orbit established." he informed the team.

[OFF]

--

WO Lamar Darius
Support Craft Pilot
USS Galileo
NPCd by Lirha Saalm

PO3 Kareel Gan
Engineering Officer, SCE
USS Galileo
(PNPC Liyar)

PO3 Justin Smoak
Security Officer, SFS
USS Galileo
(NPC Stone)

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