First Impressions

Posted on Sat Aug 12, 2023 @ 1:05pm by Lieutenant JG Adrian Hayes & Captain Jason Faulkner

2,516 words; about a 13 minute read

Mission: Shakedown
Location: Bridge, USS Challenger
Timeline: MD 4, 0800 hours

The first thing Hayes noticed as he stepped onto the bridge was how new and polished everything was. It shouldn’t have been that surprising, seeing as the Challenger had literally just come off a major refit, but it was enough to stop the young helmsman in his tracks. He’d never been on a ship in this state before, and so to see it like this was…something special.

It didn’t help that he’d been looking forward to this for weeks. Not only had he studied the data-disks, he’d also gone over the profiles and even brushed up on the new operating systems. Anything and everything to make sure he was as ready as possible to take on this new assignment.

…and now he was finally here.

Hayes looked around the room, taking in the various workstations that ran a circle along the outer bulkheads. From there, he passed the forward viewport, lingering momentarily on the unified helm/navigation console that was directly in front of it. Finally, he turned toward the center chair and its occupant, Captain Faulkner.

“Excuse me, captain,” Hayes said, stepping forward.

Faulkner had mostly settled in aboard Challenger, emphasis on mostly. Every time he turned around, it seemed like there was some new little detail or change he'd missed. The chair, for example. He'd spent hundreds of hours sitting in the thing back when he had been aboard the first time. For that matter, it was the exact same model he'd had on the Blackbird. It was still a little uncomfortable, though, even after the height had been adjusted and the back tilted just so. He wasn't sure if it was all psychological or if he'd developed an allergy to the latest synthetic leather upholstery. 


That was a minor thing. More annoying was that the his ship had apparently had trouble flying in a straight line - for orbital mechanics values of straight - between Luna and Starbase One, where they were going to finish loading supplies and personnel. The initial trip had required some last-minute adjustments and now that they were continuing working up around Jupiter tiny errors were still cropping up. No matter how intently he looked at the central navigation display or the viewscreen indicators he couldn't quite figure out why.


"Just a moment, lieutenant," he said with a distracted glance. Then he look at again. "Wait - Hayes, right? Chief helmsman?"

“Yes, sir,” Hayes replied, “Lieutenant JG Hayes, reporting for du…”

"You're from the Khawlah - did they get the upgrade to the RGA-27 nav system yet? We seem to be having problems with ours."

“What sort of problems?”

"We seem to have drifted a couple percent off-course on our way out to Jupiter, and still seeing it now," Faulkner explained. "It takes a while for the system to notice and correct our position, too. We're having trouble tracking down the root cause, though."

He gestured toward a woman at the engineering station. "Specialist Mabunda things it may be a problem with our positioning sensors due to solar and magnetic interference. There's a higher level of flare activity this week and Jupiter is always a mess of radiation."

Next he nodded towards a Tellarite at the helm. "Chief Makpol, on the other hand, thinks there's a firmware issue with the actual nav computer, and also says that the engines feel sluggish. Or maybe it's something else entirely. Feel up to taking a look yourself?"

Hayes stepped forward toward the unified navigation console. “May I,” he asked the Tellarite. Makpol grunted in assent, taking only a brief moment to secure the station before vacating the chair so Hayes could slide into it.

The first thing that Hayes noticed when he looked at the controls was that Makpol was running an unusual interface configuration (to him, at least). He contemplated reverting them back to defaults, but decided it might be quicker to make do with what was there. Even though things were not where he was used to having them, he could already see where some of the primary readouts were.

“When was the last time you adjusted your heading,” Hayes asked.

"Two minutes ago, to send us towards one of the inner moons," Makpol replied. "Io, the one that's particularly ugly even by human standards."

Sure enough, the record of the course correction matched with what the Tellarite had just told him. It did not, however, match the readout of their current heading, which had already managed to slip by several degrees. "You all weren't kidding about that drift," Hayes said, skimming through the data. Command sequences were cross-checked and verified. External radiation was well within tolerance levels. Diagnostic reports were coming back green across the board. "Well, that doesn't make sense," he muttered.

"No, it doesn't," Faulkner agreed. "And it seems to be getting worse over time. I'd have thought that meant it was Jupiter's magnetosphere interfering with the sensors, but I double-checked those myself and they look like they're running fine."

"Well...I hate to be that person, sir," Hayes said, turning to face the captain, "but did you try turning it off and back on again?"

Faulkner blinked and tipped his head slightly, a bit startled by the question.

The bridge went dead silent. Everyone turned to look at Hayes who, quite belatedly, realized how the question must have sounded and was starting to feel self-conscious for even raising it. After all, this was a seasoned crew of a freshly refit Constitution class, not some first-year cadets. Surely, they would have thought to try something like that already. And yet...

"Sorry, sir," Hayes said, "It's just that...we had a problem on the Khawlah a few cycles back. For whatever reason, the nav system wouldn't sync properly. We didn't know it at the time, but something had gotten out of alignment during the original boot sequence. We shut it down, waited a bit, and then rebooted. Worked fine after that."

"That could be it, if there's a subtle driver conflict during startup," Faulkner said slowly. He started tapping at the display on his chair's arm. "No other Connie has reported that issue, but we are the first to get this new module, and I see some of the older subsystems are shared with the Khawlah . Well, it's your station, if you think it's worth a shot, go ahead and try it."

Hayes nodded and turned back toward the helm. His hands moved across the interface, calling up what he would need for the maneuver. Systems registered standby, command sequences appeared, waiting to be executed. “I’m going to need a place to park while we cycle through…”

"Comms, let Starbase One we're doing a navigation system test and let them know we'll be non-manueverable for a while," Faulkner said. "Ask for a clear orbit towards... Callisto, that should give us plenty of time to restart or call for a tow."

As they waited for the response from traffic control, Hayes leaned over toward the woman seated next to him. “What’s your name, crewman,” he asked.

"Jalira Egan, sir," she replied. She was a young Trill woman with a petty officer's stripes.

“Nice to meet you,” Hayes said, offering her a smile, “Now, ordinarily, this would be a pretty simple maneuver, but with the nav computer out of sync, I’m going to need you to cross check my inputs. The last thing we need is to start drifting out of position while we’re offline.”

Egan took a deep breath. "Yes, sir. Just so you know, this is my first time doing this outside a simulator. I've only flown shuttles before."

"Personally, I find ships easier to handle than shuttles," Faulkner remarked. "There's not as much to hit out in open space. Traffic control is transferring the assigned orbit to your console, lieutenant. Get us on that trajectory and then begin the restart at your discretion."

“Aye, sir,” Hayes replied, “Adjusting heading to course three-two-seven mark oh-four.” The view through the forward window shifted as the Challenger banked slightly onto the new directional.

"Inertial nav shows us on course," Egan said, checking her board. "Celestial star tracking had a few seconds of lag but now it's agreeing."

“Thank you, Egan.” Having had his course confirmed, Hayes began reducing speed. They’d need enough momentum to keep on this heading, but not so much that it would get out of control if things went awry. Only when he was satisfied he’d found the sweet spot did Hayes turn his attention to the next step.

“Standby for nav system shutdown on my mark,” he said, “Three, two, one…mark.”

The moment the word left Hayes’ lips, several sections of the console in front of him went dark. He was left with only the most basic controls and a small counter indicating the status of the reboot. It currently showed three minutes, thirty-eight seconds remaining before they could begin the start-up process.

“So…anyone seen any good holovids lately?”

After a brief, awkward silence, Egan said, "The new season of Hearts Align was pretty great."

Faulkner leaned forward. "I heard they recorded the pirate escape sequence on that Daedalus-class at the Proxima Fleet Museum."

"There's no such thing as a good holovid," Makpol scoffed. "It's a gimmick, all flash and no artistic substance. Ask me again in forty or fifty years when hologram resolution is as good as a proper screen."

"Isn't that the point, though," Hayes asked, "It's part of the experience. Like those old black-and-white films or hardcopy books...the medium is as much a part of the art as whatever it's about. In forty or fifty years, you're probably going to find folks who love to watch our "old" holovids..."

"I agree, Mr. Hayes," Faulkner said. "The early decades of any new media format sees a lot of the greatest creativity with it as people try new things. Even if half of it gets left in the recycler, the rest often defines the genre for generations. For that matter, the limitations can force innovation - the early silent film era or the Haute Gevar era on Tellar saw all sorts of fascinating experiments with how to convey emotion without audible word."

After a moment, Makpol said, "The Gevar school was clearly inferior to that found in the eastern archipelago, as any discerning student of the arts would agree."

Faulkner sighed. "Time?"

"One minute, twenty-two seconds left," Hayes replied.

"I think this is the longest four minutes I've ever experienced, at least when no one was shooting at me."

Several folks around the room chuckled, and Hayes joined them. The lighthearted of the captain's tone was clearly meant to ease the awkwardness of waiting. However, there was a part of Hayes that also resonated...differently...with the man's words. After all, the relativity of time was not limited to only clocks and watched pots.

Hayes turned his attention back to his display. Although there was still some time left, he needed to make sure everything was set, including their current heading, or else they could end up right back where they started. "Egan, can you confirm these numbers for me," he asked, "I'm reading a slight deviation on the X-axis of point-of-four degrees, and on the Y-axis of...point-oh-one."

"Yes, sir, I'm seeing it too," Egan confirmed. "I'm not sure what the cause is."

Faulkner drummed his fingers again his armrest. "This near to Jupiter? That'll be magnetic field drag from the starboard nacelle. We took a torpedo hit right to the magnatomic flux chiller and it's never quite grounded properly since. Normally the nav system automatically balances it out with an equal charge to port. You should be able to tweak it manually with thrusters."

"Shouldn't...be...a...problem," Hayes said, his words punctuated by the movement of his hands inputting commands, "So long as we can confirm this is the actual deviation, which you did..." He paused to nod appreciatively in Egan's direction. "We should be good to go," he concluded, "Reboot in five, four, three, two, one..."

At the touch of a button, the system immediately responded. Areas of the console that had previously gone dark came back to life. Sequences of numbers and letters scrolled across the displays, some faster than the human eye could make them out. The orientation indicator reappeared along with several other key readouts. Finally, the various command interfaces returned, albeit in their default configurations.

"Well, it's certainly reverted back to the ten-finger setup," Makpol grumbled.

"Sorry about that..."

"No point in waiting around, let's give this a test," Faulkner said. "Set course oh-four mark two-seven, half impulse. Slingshot us around Io and back towards Starbase One.

"Aye, sir...laying in course oh-four-mark-two-seven, half impulse," Hayes replied, repeating the order aloud, "Navigation, confirm?"

"All nav systems show us coming to the correct heading," Egan said, rapidly glancing from readout to readout. "I'll let you know if they start to disagree again."

Hayes looked up from the console. Through the forward window, he could see the view shifting as the Challenger banked to its new course. So far, so good, he thought to himself. A quick glance at the controls, then back through the window again. He pushed the digital sliders up, sending power to the engines, and causing the ship to move forward. One-eighth impulse. One-quarter. One-half.. The deckplating hummed with energy. Still no signs of trouble.

"Now at one-half impulse," he reported. Through the window, the storms of Jupiter's upper atmosphere appeared to slide toward the starboard side. It wouldn't be long before their orbit would bring them past the far moon and around to their destination. "Anything?"

"All our readings are still consistent, sir," she said with a grin. "Before the restart we would have been showing glitches by this point."

"Well done, lieutenant," Faulkner said. "We'll need to keep an eye out as we continue the shakedown, but I think you may have solved our problem. This one, at any rate. Once we get back to Starbase One, take some time to get settled in. Then I'd like you to write up a report on the glitch for Starfleet Operations. If it's happened to two ships it may happen to others and people need to be aware of it."

“Aye, sir,” Hayes replied. He looked down once more at the readouts. Satisfied they were indeed holding steady on the new course, Hayes took a moment to restore the console’s interface configuration to what it had been before. He secured it and rose from the chair, allowing Makpol to take his place.

“All yours,” he said.

Then, he grabbed his bag and returned to the turbolift. There was plenty all of them needed to do before they reached Starbase One, himself included.

 

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