Posted by Commander Heather Grace (Executive Officer/Chief Science Officer) in Main Sim - Planet 2 - Wolf 359 - Pod 1

Posted by Ensign Elemirre Serinde (Engineering Officer) in Main Sim - Planet 2 - Wolf 359 - Pod 1

Posted by Lieutenant Helena Laursen (Helm/Nagivation Officer) in Main Sim - Planet 2 - Wolf 359
Posted by… suppressed (1) by the Post Ghost! 👻
[snip]

Team 1(thread here: https://www.star-fleet.com/core/stf1/sojourner/posts/189341/ )
Cmdr Grace (Lead/Sci)
Dr Grey (Med)
Ens Serrinde (Eng)
Lt Black (Sec)
NE Pilot

Team 2
Capt Renault (Lead)
Lt Locke (Sci)
Lt Kelleher (Eng)
Ens Sanks (Sec)
Laursen (Pilot)

NE Bikey called over from Pod 2, “..So where’s everyone thats going with me eh? Report assignment I got says I’m to be getting Commander Grace, Lieutenant Grey and Black, and Ensign Serrinde! So far none of these folks showed up here yet to check in and get rigged up! My launch window is in 5 minutes by the flight plan..” he said. “..Or are we not doing those anymore?” he queried mostly to himself with a shrug.

GM CockRoach

Renault answered the call from the second pod himself. “We are still using flight plans, Ensign Bikey.” He shook his head, “They will be there shortly.”

~ Capt Renault

Ensign Sanks lightly chuckled to himself at the back of the shuttle at the captain’s response. He slid into the shuttle mostly unnoticed, after making sure he had everything he needed.

Ensign Sanks, Security

El had been back in her machine shop after the initial ‘ooohs and awwwws’ as they entered this new system. Before they had been shooed back to work for status checks on engines that had been running at sustainable warp speed for nearly a month, it was time for most engineers to ensure that these Cochranes had come through in not just good order, but best order. But that would be for the others; El was still in partial exile in the machine shop. Perhaps it was a stubborn part of her coming out or simply a contentment in where she was (or so she tried to tell herself that) that she hadn’t completed the requisite security course and what remedial tests for the Sojourner operation. Did she look at the material? Yes. Could she pass the exam? In her sleep. Did she traverse the ship - all but the bridge - to learn by experience what she had studied? Yes.

And so it came as a surprise when she was called to be a part of the away team, seeing that on the single computer bank on the bulkhead just inside and to the right of the door to the machine shop. She had preferred standing at the console and so had not yet attached the chair to it. Strangely, it had not been installed but was there with the rest of the inventory. It was now sitting, boxed, next to the console. It had beeped, indicating a message was waiting for her. She presumed, albeit incorrectly, that it was a maintenance issue as she had not yet been relieved of the service sup position. Instead it was a call for an away team.

At first El glanced at it thinking it must be for someone else, but she was wrong. It was lacking in much detail, however. That was all it said and to report to the shuttle bay. She supposed that she would find out what she needed then. Grabbing together a basic engineering kit in a shoulder pack, El worked her way down to the shuttle bay. When she arrived she found that there were people milling about and getting ready. One shuttle looked to have most people around it. The other - Bikey was it? - was there. Was he the pilot? El recognized the face from the galley but didn’t know his name. “Where are we going?” she asked. “I didn’t see anything down on what I was supposed to do and what it would be like.” The Chief was there but he was pretty much stuffing himself into the other pod and too late to ask.Who else was she going down with? Did she know them? Outside of engineering and the helmswoman Helena she didn’t really know many. She knew the support staff more, she had to admit, and some of the others who had come from the Bonaventure. They, however, were scattered about this 7 decked ship.

“Am I in this shuttle then?” she asked Bikey.

El, Eng

NE Bikey gave El a thumbs over to pod 1, “..Nope! You’re over with pod 1’s team!” he replied.

El’s head followed Bikey’s thumb to the other pod. It hadn’t been getting as much attention as pod 2, and El felt a trace of insecurity with Helena flying the other. Was this the classic butterflies in the stomach feeling that some talked about. She had had a number of firsts in her life, of course, from growing up and the life experiences that came with that. El tended to have a certain anxiety leading up to it, wanting to have more control in the thing itself of course. Who didn’t? In the event itself, El excelled, but she had to get over that nervous hump first. She had had life skills passed on to her. Meditations. Exercises. Breathing. All to settle the mind and the body. ‘Where the mind goes, Elemirre, there the will will follow. Train your mind to the task, that which is before you, whether it is sweeping a floor or a mighty act. In your mind they can be one and the same.’ Yes, El thought, in the task she was fine.

El moved to Pod 1 and stowed her small things and took a seat. ‘Break down each thing you are doing,’ her mentor had said to her. ‘What comes is not the now. What has been is not the now. You have only the now and these moments hold your focus. Look not to the horizon when you may trip over a root before you.’ She closed her eyes, breathing out an exercise to help put her in the now.

El, Eng

When El asked her question, Naomi’s eyes popped up. Noticing the woman’s hesitation, she considered answering, but stopped herself since the question wasn’t directed at her.

-Lt. Naomi D. Locke, Sci

Helena glanced back at Naomi and Sanks, “Welcome aboard. Looks like we are all here.” Helena slipped out of the pilot’s seat and over to the hatch.

”..So we getting this show on the road or not?” Bikey asked again

GM CockRoach

“Just had to grab a few last things,” Heather said as she came into the pod bay. She was wearing a backpack in which she had put some general test equipment into and supplies, and was carrying a small case of some more specialized equipment. It only took a minute for her to stow the gear before she stuck her head back out of the hatch.

“Are you guys waiting for an engraved invitation or something? We’ve got a planet to explore!”

El’s eyes opened slowly at the exuberance of the Commander. She had only really seen Commander Grace from a distance, and that rarely. She was an older woman, taller than El and had a slimness to her that El, even with her Asian physique, didn’t have. She seemed to carry herself with a ‘go getter’ air and at the moment that was showing itself up clearly, at least to El. El had never been to the bridge nor had she really seen Commander Grace more than twice in the galley and maybe three times passing through engineering. She’d never looked into the machine shop where El essentially lived. The shop was, for all intents and purposes, the museum of technology - the place that makes the pieces that make the ship go. Where engineering was the epitome of Earth’s current technology, the machine shop was a wooden sailing vessel by comparison. Few knew it existed and few really cared about it. It was, in a sense, a microcosm of El’s life.

Heather couldn’t help but get excited. Geology hadn’t been her specialty, but there was something awe inspiring about exploring a planet that no one had set foot on before.

Ducking her head back in, Heather moved forward to sit in one of the front seats.

El was not sitting front but quiet toward the rear. Helena had offered to show her how to fly a shuttle. El had not yet taken her up on that but had done a fair bit of reading on the shuttle pods. She began with the engineering of them to learn all about that and had, in her self-prescribed education time each day, come down and examined what she had learned by reading. While she could picture the images of the conduits, power circuitry, panels and piping, thruster arrays and the likes, seeing them and getting dirty from crawling about in it was more valuable. To not utterly embarrass herself, another fault she has tried to move past, El had studied flight controls and knew the panels and controls. What she lacked was experience. Yes, she had flown worker bees and maintenance shuttles and even a troop carrier assault craft, but not this. Yet. She craned her neck over to see Bikey and how he would do it.

Watching Commander Grace shift into her seat and move herself about gave El the comparative imagery of the Commander as an exuberant dog while El was more catlike. There was something that El totally didn’t really know, but the Commander should. “Commander?” El called from two seats back. “I got the call to come here for this. What are we doing?” Which, by her quiet tone also implied, ‘What am I doing?’

El, Eng

“Bikey we are good to go. I’m securing the hatch and we are going to launch.”

Helena osed and secured the hatch. There was a hiss of air as the hatch sealed and the internal air started pumping. Slipping into her seat she buckled in. “Welcome to shuttle pod 2. Please make sure your gear and traytable are stowed and locked in place. Please make sure your harness is securely buckled a d fits snuggly.”

Helena hit the ship’s comm. “Sojourner this is shuttle pod 2. We are ready to launch. Please clear the bay.”

Warning klaxons sounded in the bay and everyone cleared the space into the corridor and then the doors locked. The bay doors began to open. “Cleared for launch, Laursen. Fly safe.”

“Always do.” The shuttle slipped out into the depths of space and made a smooth turn toward the planet and their landing point.

Lt Laursen, pilot

As Pod 2 left the bay, Heather nodded towards Bikey. “Let’s see what this planet has to offer Ensign.”

OOC: Grey/Black - Go ahead and jump in when you can, but it’s more then past time to get this pod on the ground.

Cmdr. Grace XO/CSO