Chapter 3: Snoopy and the Red Baron
Shuttlebay, USS Oberon
As he stood on the deck of the
shuttlebay, LCDR Trevor McBride thought about how he’d never been this close to
a Romulan ship before, even if it was just a shuttle. He wanted to take some scans while the Oberon’s chief engineer, LT Parker,
loaded some supplies on board it, but he figured that he’d have plenty of
opportunity to study Romulan technology now that they were stationed at the Veloris.
Besides, the two Reman security guards standing near the loading hatch
at the rear didn’t seem to want to let anyone but LT Parker near the
shuttle. Even the LT had gotten a look
of warning from them, but the tall, muscular American Indian simply glared
back, and they seemed to grudgingly accept him.
Trevor recognized that glare from the few times when he’d tried to give
Parker suggestions about how to retune the warp core. He’d only been promoted from Chief Engineer
to Operations Manager just before the Oberon’s
refit started, and he was finding it difficult to keep his hydro-spanner out of
LT Parker’s territory. Old habits die
hard, afterall.
As Commander McBride watched LT
Parker load the shuttle, the assistant chief engineer, LTJG Heroth, came over
to stand next to the operations manager at the shuttlebay control console. “Did Parker send you to make sure I don’t
make a run for the engine room while he’s gone?” Trevor said with a grin to the
Tellarite.
“Of course,” Heroth said, his
jovial smile covered by a thick beard.
“His exact words were ‘shoot to kill.’
“Actually, I’ve come to ask if you
can give me a bit of a hand while the Chief’s gone. We’ve been having some problems with the new
variable geometry software for the warp engines. They were designed to run on the Intrepid class’s much faster bio-neural
system.”
McBride nodded and said, “Does he know you’re asking me to help?”
“It was his suggestion. He just couldn’t ask you himself.” Heroth’s voice quieted down a bit as he
continued, “He actually thinks quite highly of you, sir. He’s just too proud to admit it. It also doesn’t help that you can’t stay out
of engineering. He takes it as a bit of
an insult, like you don’t have confidence in him.”
“Oh,” McBride said, “I didn’t
realize that.” He watched as LT Parker
boarded the shuttle one last time, followed by the Reman guards, who closed the
door abruptly after them. “I’ve been an
engineer almost all my life, and it’s just hard to get it out of my blood, I
suppose. I didn’t even stop to think of
how it was affecting him.”
“The two of you are a lot alike,”
Heroth said as the shuttle lifted off the deck, heading out into the blackness
of space behind the Oberon. “Great engineers, but still stubborn and
insufferable hu-mans.”
Trevor looked at Heroth and
chuckled saying, “Come on, let’s go see if we can fix the engines. Maybe we can get a bit more speed out of the
processors with another set of subspace drivers, and then we’ll look at trying
to streamline the nacelle control code.”
***********************************************
LT Jennifer Cartwright stood at
one of the large windows of the crew lounge, staring at the Romulan outpost as
it loomed nearby. She could make out the
three Romulan starships docked to the station, one a light cruiser, and the
other two were the frigates that had escorted the Oberon into Romulan space.
The whole situation reminded her of the historical accounts of when the
USS Enterprise crossed Federation
space on a covert mission to steal a Romulan cloaking device. How things have changed, the lieutenant
thought. During that incident, the
“You look worried,” LCDR Jenna
D’Sora said in her quiet, but almost matriarchal voice as she came up next to
the pilot. “I’m sure he’s fine.”
Jennifer chuckled and said, “Of
that, I have no doubt. Terri can often
times be rather passionate about his convictions. I hope the Romulans know what they’ve gotten
themselves into by stationing us here.”
Jenna nodded and said, “You and
the captain go back a long way.”
Jennifer looked over at the chief
of security and smiled, saying, “Yeah, we met at the academy. He was my squadron commander for a couple of
years.”
Jenna could tell there was
something else there, but she didn’t want to force the issue. She’d only been on the ship for a couple of
months now, and she was still trying to get to know the senior staff more
personally. LT Cartwright was someone
whom she’d almost immediately taken a liking to, but she still didn’t feel
comfortable about bringing up her relationship with Captain Jerran except in
small doses or when Jennifer offered the information.
“Hey, Jenna. Terri wrote a new program for the holodeck, a
World War I aerial battle. Wanna try it
out this evening? I’m dying to get a jump
on practicing it so I can knock the Captain out of the sky.”
“I’d love to, but you’re going to
have to teach me to fly one of those planes.
I don’t think I’ve flown anything older than a Type VI shuttle.”
“Don’t worry. They’re really easy to fly, very little
instrumentation to clutter up your view.”
“Alright!” Jenna said with a grin.
“Let’s go get some outfits,
then. Part of the fun of these old
period pieces is the leather jackets.”