Cadet Flight Training (Part 1 of 2)

Posted on 19 Jun 2014 @ 9:39pm by Chief Warrant Officer 3 Lamar Darius & Cadet Sophomore Grade Alenis Taban

2,610 words; about a 13 minute read

Mission: Episode 06 - Legend of Souls
Location: USS Galileo - Main Shuttlebay, Deck 4
Timeline: MD 4 - 1330 hours

[ON]

The previous day's away mission - Taban's fist ever - should have been an occasion of great excitement. But instead he'd spent the entire time on-edge, trying to avoid contact with anyone, and for the most part had probably just seemed like an empty uniform. One of the Lieutenants, he'd not been able to tell which one, had at one stage, at least-partly jokingly, suggested he get certified with support craft - in case they'd needed to make a speedy getaway (at least that way he could be of some use while aboard). Thus it had been arranged that he would spend some time with Master Warrant Officer Darius to do just that.

As he stepped into the shuttlebay he looked around for a minute or so to try and see if he could find the man. Finally moving to their ride from the previous day he stuck his head through the hatch and called in "Hello?"

A series of sequentially louder and louder 'dings' could be heard from within the cabin, but strangely they were coming from underneath the craft rather than inside. A loud 'tink' sounded followed by the echo of a few explicatives from below the primary nacelle housing, and Lamar emerged after pushing himself out from underneath the craft on his back. "Down here!" he called out, waving the hyperspanner in his hand to get the man's attention.

The chief support craft pilot slowly got to his feet and holstered the engineering tool in the kit attached to his belt, then wiped his grimy hands on his pant legs and looked around to see who had summoned him. "Hello?" he called back just as he noticed the silhouette of someone already half-inside the entrance to the Volga Class runabout.

"Master Warrant Officer, Darius?" enquired the cadet, partly nervously as he tried to peer through the gloom. Realising the voice was coming from outside the ship he withdrew his head from the hatch and took a few steps forward towards the now-apparent figure and thought he recognised the man's face. "I'm Cadet Alenis - we met briefly on the away mission yesterday. I was told to report to you for training."

Tall, young-looking Cardassian? Yep, Lamar recognized him. He had a knack for remembering faces and indeed remembered the cadet as one of his passengers from the previous day. Unfortunately he had forgotten to recently check the chronometer, and now realized he was probably a bit behind on his schedule. "Yeah, I remember you from the shuttle ride...hope it wasn't too bumpy for you. I've heard cadets sometimes lose their lunch on those types of flights," he replied in jest, then quickly changed the subject back to the matter at hand. "I'm a bit behind on my work but I'll be done in a few minutes if you want to give me a hand? Then we can start to go over some of your course material?"

Alenis smiled. "It was fine thank you, Master Warrant Officer. Compared to what I've put up with on the Freighter Jian'Karra it was very smooth." He replied as he moved right alongside the man. "Be happy to: how can I help?"

Lamar's eyes flicked towards one of the nearby maintenance lockers located along the side of the shuttlebay wall. "Second cabinet, inside the third drawer. There's a large PADD in there and I need to enter a maintenance log," he answered, indicating for Alenis to fetch it for him. "And you can call me 'Chief', if you want. Or Darius. Or Chief Darius...I'm not too big on formalities."

The Cadet nodded and replied "Aye, Chief." before fetching the requested PADD. Noticing where the man seemed to be focusing his efforts on the craft he asked, as he handed the PADD over "Problems with the primary buffer panel?"

"Yea, and also with one of the secondary EPS manifolds," he nodded in confirmation before taking the PADD from the cadet. "And for some reason, it only affects the operations subsystems...none of the primary flight control systems seem to be taking a hit, but the transporters, replicators, and comms have all been a little shaky this morning."

The Cadet thought for a moment. "We had something similar on the 'Karra a few years back..." he mused as he tried to recall the incident. "I think we had to recalibrate the beta-matrix compositor in the end. Surely that would get picked up on a diagnostic before becoming so severe, though?" Taban wasn't really talking to the other man, more just vocalising his stream of consciousness. It was a trait he'd picked up from Solomon, and according to Berant it was one of the most irritating things ever.

Lamar half-listened to the cadet's diagnosis while trying to come up with one of his own, and finally he gave up when he realized it would take him the better part of the afternoon to fully sort out the problem with the large runabout. Not wanting to waste Alenis' training time with more mechanically-minded issues, he gave a dismissive wave of his hand and clipped the PADD to his belt. "Well, whatever it is, I can work it out later today. Don't want to cut into your training time too much with grease monkey stuff," he said. "So, um, what kind of previous flight training do you have? Did they teach you anything at the Academy yet?" he inquired.

The cadet shook his head "Not until third year, sorry, Chief - we're doing half a semester in Marseille." He paused for a moment, unsure whether to divulge the major information on the subject. "I've flown the Jian'Karra hundreds of times though - was taught by a level seven pilot."

"Hmm..." Lamar stroked his goatee while he pondered the best way to approach the man's flight training. It seemed that while he hadn't yet had a formal classroom session and instruction at the Academy, he had real-world experience which made it a bit difficult for the warrant officer to figure out where to start. With a light shrug, he supposed the best way would be to simply throw him in the cockpit and find out.

"I can give you some of the course material on flight theory for you to read on your own time, but I think we should probably start out in the holodeck with some hands-on simulation time so I can see how adept you already are. And then we can go from there. Cool?" he proposed.

Taban nodded eagerly. "Brilliant. Thank you, Chief." Wondering if he'd be able to get any work done in his quarters with the irritating squeaking of Pip and Pup he decided reading them over a meal in the mess-hall was probably the best way forwards. After less than 48 hours on the ship he had already decided that his quarters were for sleep, the washroom, and as little else as possible. Pip and Pup weren't the only reason, but their owner had an uncanny ability to make Taban feel nervous and on edge.

"The holodecks are..." he muttered to himself to try and make sure he had it right. "One deck down, three sections aft, right?" Seemingly getting it by himself he spoke up to address the warrant officer "If you want, Chief, I can set the holodeck to record my session - I don't want to interfere with your schedule any more than I already have."

"That's right, they're next to the supply storage area," Lamar confirmed, then shook his head at the notion of not being needed. It wasn't really his style to leave a trainee unattended, and while it would certainly allow him to get more maintenance done on the craft, he didn't feel it would benefit the cadet as much.

"Don't worry about recording your session, I've got some free time and the maintenance can always wait. Besides, if you keep crashing in the simulator and no one's there to show you why...it wouldn't be a very productive session," he chuckled, then walked over to the maintenance lift in the corner of the shuttle bay while motioning for Alenis to follow. "Co'mon, we can get to Deck 5 using the lift down to the shuttle maintenance bay."

The Cadet smiled. "Appreciate it, Chief." He replied as he followed the man over to the lift. The more of these nooks and crannies he encountered the more he was becoming entirely overawed at the amount of functionality which had been crammed into such a small vessel. "Have you been aboard long, Chief?" he asked as they reached the lift.

Once both men were on the lift, Lamar activated it with a tap on the railing controls and it began to descent into the maintenance area located below the shuttlebay. Here, another large support craft -- a Polaris Class transport -- came into view, neatly parked in its storage area awaiting use.

"Almost a year, if I remember right," he answered. "I originally came on as a Marine Corps transfer, then served my first three months as COB. Then when our old chief engineer, Chief Quinn, lost his arm during the Sienna incident, he was reassigned to COB and I was reassigned to flight control," he elaborated.

The lift stopped at its destination and Lamar led the young cadet across the bay to the Jeffries tube located against the far wall. He paused for a second and cast a quick glance back at the very tall man, suddenly realizing this might not have been the best idea. "Uhh...are you going to fit in a Jeffries tube?"

"You'd be surprised." he replied with a smile. "Xepolite crawlspaces are about half the size. I'm used to it." He stood to one side to allow the Chief to lead on - as without much room to maneuver he didn't want to take a wrong turn.

"Alright, if you say so." Lamar would have to see it to believe it, and proceeded inside the cramped maintenance tunnel on his hands and knees. The journey to the main corridor of Deck 5 wasn't too far, but it took a couple minutes during which the warrant officer glanced back behind him several times to make sure Alenis hadn't somehow gotten stuck.

Finally they reached the exit and Lamar popped open the hatch and crawled out, then turned around and stuck his hand out to give the young Cardassian a helpful lift to his feet.

"Thanks, Chief." He grunted as he hauled himself up. He was glad he didn't have to do that very often as he got to his feet again and felt the blood flow return to his knees once more.

It wasn't long before they approached Holodeck 1, and Lamar moved in front of the small LCARS terminal next to the door where he quickly queued up a list of the available flight training programs stored in the ship's database. Mumbling quietly to himself as he thought out loud, he finally selected what he thought would be a suitable program and initiated it, then moved to the large holodeck double doors. "After you," he prompted the cadet to enter when ready.

Inside the holodeck, the program revealed itself to be a rather standard recreation of a Type-9 interior, complete with functional controls at the cockpit. The view through the windshield was also basic, a simple starfield devoid of any major celestial bodies yet littered with colorful distant nebulae and other important position markers.

"What's the plan then, Chief?" the Cadet asked as he took the pilot's seat. "Loop-the-loops without spilling your drink?" He chucked recalling Berant's favourite test of piloting-skill.

"Not quite...I was thinking something a little more basic, for now," replied the chief support craft pilot with a chuckle of his own. "Let's quickly run through the pre-flight checklist, then we can work on some navigational techniques." Unclipping a PADD from his belt, he queued up a rather lengthy five-page list of systems and control functions which needed to be enabled and verified before the craft was in the green, then handed the PADD to Alenis before taking a seat next to him in the co-pilot station.

"In practice, most of the pre-flight sequence is done automatically by the computer, but it's good to know how to do it all manually in case you encounter a malfunction and need to troubleshoot the problem," Lamar went on to explain.

The Cadet couldn't help but allow the corner of a smirk to escape the corner of his mouth. "Oh - trust me, Chief - if there's one thing the hodge-podge of cobbled-together systems on the Jian'Karra has taught me: it's how to troubleshoot a problem. I'm more concerned when the diagnostics tell me what I'm actually seeing than when they say something entirely different."

Spinning his seat around to face forwards he took a moment to familiarise himself with the control-layout, before moving his hands swiftly over the controls. "Alright then, going for initial engine warm-up routine." He muttered to himself. The readings for the system appeared on one of the smaller panels and he studies them for a moment. It was a perfect start. "Alright then," he continued to talk under his breath "bringing primary systems online."

He ran through the various checks, talking himself through them as he did "Computer, check. Life Support, check. Auxiliary systems..." he paused for a second as he double checked the readings. "Computer, run a level five diagnostic on the auxiliary environmental control processor." He waited for a moment for the results, which came back normal. Looking confused for a moment he re-ran his initial check on the system, which also now came back normal. "Hmmm..." he muttered to himself as he wondered why the result had changed so much. Moving through a series of sub-menus he pulled up the boot-log for the system and saw the cause of the initial readings: a delay in the system booting. "Auxiliary systems: check." He finally said once he'd made himself happy with the situation.

Moving swiftly through the remainder of the list, abandoning his commentary, he checked the sensors, thrusters, impulse engines, warp drive, power systems, weapons, landing systems, and communications systems. Finally finishing them he turned to the older man and said "Pre-flight complete, Sir."

Lamar kept a watchful eye on Alenis while the young man finished the task at hand and made several mental notes during the process. Satisfied with the cadet's work while he looked over the systems on his own console, he gave the Cardassian hybrid a nod of approval. "Looks good. Contact flight control on the primary comm channel and get permission to get underway, then take us out at one-half thrusters. Heading zero-zero-zero, mark-zero," he instructed.

"Aye, Chief." He replied, turning back to the console. Activating the shuttle's comm-system he made the request as instructed. Pausing for a few moments as he awaited the confirmation he hovered his hands an inch above the controls, ready to get underway. Finally the confirmation was received from the simulation and he lifted the shuttle off the deck and eased her to the shuttlebay exit, passing smoothly through the forcefield. Once in the void of space he pushed the throttle to the half-thruster speed and kept the shuttle in the straight-line requested until they were over a kilometer away from the simulated-Galileo's bow. Glancing across at the Chief he prepared for the next set of instructions.

To Be Continued...

[OFF]

--

MWO Lamar Darius
Chief Support Craft Pilot
USS Galileo
[PNPC - Saalm]

Cadet (SO) Alenis Taban
Operations Officer (provisional)
USS Galileo

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