The Graveyard at the End of Never #1

Posted on Thu Feb 9th, 2023 @ 1:46am by Lieutenant Thraxina & Chief Petty Officer Meredith Corden & Ensign Syaffia

0 words; about a 1 minute read

Mission: Mission 2: Rendezvous At Starbase 10
Location: Shuttle Bay and Object B55677t
Timeline: During Midway's sojourn at SB10

Lt. Thraxina had arrived early to the Shuttlebay to ensure that the F Class Craft which bore the exciting moniker of 'Number II' was warmed up and ready to go. Although her demeanour to 'Other Ranks' was frosty and correct, she had made it clear in a previous conversation with Yeoman Meredith Corden that she would be more than willing to provide flight training for the ambitious non-commissioned officer. This in turn would add to the hours Thraxina could log training others: useful ammunition for when she applied for an Instructor post at the Academy.

Ostensibly, that was the sum of the relationship between the rather young Helmswoman and the more experienced Yeoman: Officer and Non-Com; Teacher and Pupil: even if other emotions, maybe even resentments, bubbled under the surface.

A slight spanner in the proverbial works was that Thraxina had been assigned a cadet to babysit, sorry, mentor, and they had been rostered onto this training flight as well. Something of a nuisance, it had to be said, especially as the haughty Andaran woman had been unable to meet with the newcomer to the ship and lay down the law in terms of the attitude and behaviour she expected from a cadet toward a superior officer.

While she waited for the two trainees to arrive, she took time to look on her electronic clipboard and examine this... Syaffia's record. Ugh. Argelian. well, that certainly wasn't a good start.

Syaffia made sure to arrive early, and be presentable when she did. Uniform absolutely neat and free of imperfection, dyed blond hair tied back into a neat ponytail down her back and the slightest bit of makeup for effect, she was certain her new mentor would at least have a good first impression of her. Striding into the cargo bay about five seconds after the lieutenant deigned to look at her record she came to attention before her. "Cadet senior grade Syaffia reporting as ordered, ma'am." She announced. Hopefully that'd be enough for now. Even if it wasn't, well, she could always prove her wrong later. Her father had not died for nothing and she was determined to prove it.

Thraxina, of course, pretended not to even notice the cadet coming until she announced herself, and only then deigned to look languidly up at her... and up... and up! At 5'7", Thraxina was no dwarf, but this girl was positively statuesque. Standing properly to attention, proper form of address (Ma'am - Thraxina hated that 'Sir' nonsense for female officers), flawlessly turned out, not even a ladder in her regulation tights, hair not hanging too loose or too long. Damn: not a thing to criticise!

"Yes, well, you're a bit tall, aren't you?" she commented, clutching at straws. "Let's have a look at your training record..." The officer scanned the clipboard, which displayed a rather exemplary catalogue of tests passed. "Ah!" she looked happy to have found something missing.

"Not done a landing on an uncharted stellar body, eh? We'll see if we can tick that one off today. First though, I've another trainee coming along, first time at the helm, I'll have her take us out for an hour and then you can take over. Until then, you will sit quietly at the back of the shuttle. Is that understood, Cadet?" she asked tersely.

The flintiness of her mentor's tone told her a few things - most of which involved her likely not getting some, if she was dating at least, and that she clearly liked the chief petty officer that joined them a whole lot more than her. That was fine. Between a senior enlisted crew member and an officer cadet in her final year of study, where she would place her trust was obvious - but she was determined to change that. She'd work hard, the lieutenant would see, and then maybe her tone would change.

Or perhaps, as Poppy had warned her, she was just a bitch and did things this way by default. Which was also entirely possible.

"Yes, ma'am." She replied. Gotta bite the bullet, then, as much as it was unpleasant to do so.

Meredith arrived right on time. Her uniform and appearance was also regulation. She had left Thraxina no excuse to chew her out over nothing. However, she had not obsessed over it like she was preparing for the parade ground. She was here to work. She was here to receive flight training but, yesMeredith arrived right on time. She was here to receive flight training but, on her end as well, the emotions below the surface were a little more complicated after her frank exchange with Thraxina the previous day. Resentment? She would not have described her feelings that way. They had gotten frustrated with one another and, perhaps, did not see exactly eye to eye on a few things, but that was not entirely a bad thing. One did not get frustrated with people one had written off. Their little misunderstanding had also had little to do with Thraxina's firm demeanor. It had actually been the Ardanan officer's atttempts to joke around with her that had gone over poorly and then things had escalated a bit.

She briefly noticed Syaffia. She was used to being the tallest woman in most rooms but the cadet had two or three centimers on her. Not a huge difference, but she noticed it. She came to attention beside the other woman but she waited for the exchange between the Cadet and the Lieutenant to finish before she announced herself. "Chief Petty Officer Meredith Corden, reporting for duty, ma'am."

“Very good” Thraxina nodded “Corden this is Cadet Syaffia, Cadet, this is CPO Corden. You will both be logging some flying time today. All right, chocks away, in you go. Corden, you will start by running start up checks and taking us out, Cadet, you will observe.

"Cadet," Meredith greeted Syaffia. "Yes, ma'am," she answered Thraxina.

The Lt. couldn’t remember whether a CPO outranked an SGC in this situation, the Andaran service didn’t have all these silly mini-ranks: oh well, it didn’t matter, as long as they both looked up to her, she decided, as she looked up at them both.

Meredith stepped in and took her seat in the co-pilot's chair. She waited until everyone else was seated before proceeding.

Syaffia nodded and sat in the back of the shuttle, ready to observe and learn. It wasn't like she'd never done it before - on the holodeck, at least. She had yet to do an actual landing on an uncharted planet, but it seemed that today would be her lucky day.

Onc everyone was seated, Meredith went through the pre-flight checklist. Then she took them through the doors and over the set course she was instructed to follow. There was a deliberateness to her movements which an experienced pilot or even one not self-conscious of being carefully watched would have lacked, but otherwise there were no errors.

Thraxina was impressed but not surprised by Corden's first attempts at getting them through the shuttle doors (she had her hand on the controls ready to take over if they had veered toward the frame of the open bay if necessary, but had not needed to do so) and piloting them on a set course with many of the automatic helm functions toggled off. She suspected that the tall human woman had not only read the manuals, but spent some time using a simulator.

"All right" she announced after about an hour of this chugging along through a vacuum of nothingness on half impulse. She picked her electronic clipboard up from the control panel and jabbed at it with a stylus. "We'll log that as your first hour's flying time. Well done, Corden, very good." she said flatly, rather like a teacher congratulating the slow child in the class for managing to spell C.A.T. correctly.

"Thank you, ma'am," Meredith answered her. If that tone bothered her, she gave no sign of it.

"Swap places." she commanded, looking round at where the other tall blonde sat, and swapping records on her screen. "You will be landing on object B55677t. Deep space scanning has revealed that it is lifeless, possesses a breathable atmosphere and earthlike gravity. You may use automatic instrumentation in your landing, I shall be monitoring you and marking your performance. These marks will go towards your final academy grade. I shall retake control if I feel the craft or its occupants are in any danger. Very well, Cadet..."she pressed a button on her side of the panel "... the Conn is yours."

Meredith stood, well, crouched and moved back to sit in one of the passenger seats, watching as the cadet took the conn.

A small grey planetoid, unlit by any close star, had by now appeared on the shuttle forward view screen and Syaffia might not have been too encouraged when Thraxina twisted in her seat and said to the Yeoman "You may wish to put your seatbelt on, Corden; this could be a bumpy ride."

Meredith put her seatbelt on, eyes still forward.

It amused Syaffia somewhat that the lieutenant sounded like a bored, cynical Academy lecturer or instructor evaluating a cadet after a long day, all the while thinking about going home to a nice, warm bed and a long sleep. Almost as if she didn't want to be here at all. Or perhaps she simply didn't believe that she or the Chief were capable of meeting her standards.

Well, she was determined to prove this uptight woman wrong.

Syaffia was by no means an ace pilot and she would've never purported herself to be. She did, however, know how to land a shuttle smoothly, and after a few minutes of relatively smooth flight and a few bumps the trio would find themselves landing on the planetoid's surface. She suppressed a relieved sigh as she took her hands off the controls. The lieutenant would've probably caught on to that and tried to nitpick it as hesitance. Which it wasn't.

Thraxina marked the first half of Syaffia's test completed on her clipboard and lay it down on the control panel.

"All right, let's have a look at where you've put us." she said standing up. It was one thing to land them on the planet, it was another if she'd landed them, say, on the edge of a crumbling cliff face, or on top of the revered Leader of any native civilization. Not that the shuttle's sensors showed either of those things.

"Standard Landing Party equipment" she snapped. That meant phaser and phaser belts each and Thraxina would also bring along a tricorder to take readings. Might as well add some information to the data banks at the Federation's Memory Alpha library while they were here.

After somewhat patronisingly ordering the Cadet to ensure her phaser was set to Stun, Thraxina led the other two out of the shuttle door and onto the surface of the planetoid, which was remarkably flat, with the odd boulder strewn around.

Thraxina held up the tricorder. "That's odd..." It was the last word she uttered before, in a wink of an eye, all three women disappeared with a strange 'Doooiinggg!' noise, leaving behind three phaser belts, three phasers and a tricorder in the sandy ground beside the shuttle.

[Continued in... The Graveyard at the End of Never #2]

 

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