Posted by Lieutenant Junior Grade Reia Shandy (C Intelligence -Comm Officer) in MAIN SIM: Arrival on Beltran

Posted by GM Kate (GM) in MAIN SIM: Arrival on Beltran
There was tension in the air of the ship. Even those not on the bridge knew they were near the planet Beltran when the Genesis dropped out of warp and engaged their impulse engines. It had only been a week since the crew had wrapped up the last mission and got the orders for their new one. The new mission to Beltran was simple and consisted of two parts: Finish the negotiations to make the planet officially a member of the Federation and bring back the schematics of the proprietary shield technology Beltran scientists had developed. The reason for the anxiety in the air was the location of the planet. Beltran was on the edge of the Gorn Hegemony. This close to the Gorn Hegemony made everyone nervous. The Gorn were a race that so far could not be reasoned with or dealt with diplomatically. The Gorn were secular and any attempt to break that secularism ended in death or conflict.

All senior staff and department heads had been requested to the bridge thirty minutes prior to dropping out of warp. As the Genesis moved into Beltran’s orbit, the comms officer signaled to the Captain a message was incoming from the planet.

Dagen had come up to the bridge as requested which was fine. Bat was already thinking ahead to the next Halloween and was all excited. He had seen some Terran holo of Batman and he was hoping to dress up as that. What was worse he wanted Angel to be Robin; Dagen suspected he only wanted to see the attractive Vulcan in tights. Leaving Angel in charge and Deeg set to research Gorn technology - just in case - he himself was using the bridge time to scan about with those Kelbonite deposits. Why, he wondered, did they not have such things on board a ship - in certain spots that is for added security? That being said, he perused the surface scans and concentrations of the Kelbonite to see whether there may just be regions or spots where a transporter could set a person down if need be. His head turned about at the transmission and he watched the advertisement.

=/\=Attention Federation vessel. Beltran, the home of King Atremis, welcomes you.=/\= As if it were a holo advertisement for a vacation planet, images of the surface and the monarch began to pop up showing the message was an automated response instead of a direct hail. Blue skies and green field landscapes flipped back and forth between images of the sparkling capitol with its banners, statues, and skyscrapers ending with a portrait-like image of the rules King Capser Artemis.

“King Atremis looks like such a humble fellow,” Dagen said after what? The ninth time his image came up.

=/\=Please move your ship into a low geosynchronous orbit around the planet and prepare for a shuttle with the delegation to arrive at your ship in the next fifteen minutes.=/\= The request for a low geosynchronous orbit and a shuttle was pointless in the age of transporters; however, the large crustal deposits of Kelbonite, prevented the use of all beaming technology.

After several moments a second beep from the comms station indicated another call was coming through. This one appeared to not be automated. The comms officer looked back at the CO or XO for permission to engage it.

GM

Reia had been allowing the junior comms officer to perform all duties until now. She had been using this time to observe the young woman and study the Gorn language as it was. With the second beep however, she decided it was time to take her position at the comms station. Glancing down after the second beep she raised an eyebrow.

“Second message incoming captain.”

-Reia, CIO/Comms

His eyes turned over to Reia. He would have to ask her what she knew of the Gorn later. With her the IO he figured there would be a bit more that was juicy that could not be easily curated from the ship’s computers. He took a moment to enjoy her profile before wondering who was in that ‘delegation’. What was the ‘details’ that yet needed to be done in negotiations? From his experience and the memories of Thor’s first host these sorts of things were formalities at this point unless something radical came up. Picard seemed to have all the anomalies in his travels. May this be the counterbalance of being a normal easygoing signing ceremony. The ‘shield technology’ had been shrouded in secrecy. He knew that Sebastian, his on site ‘geek’ as he called himself, was itching to look at it. As was Dagen, though his itch was more of a sublimated excitement at seeing and tinkering with something new. He was well aware that a Starship was a highly complicated machine and adding another thing to it meant considering a thousand other factors. Fortunately most of those would be highlighted and dealt with by the computer and they would only have those that required menial intervention and adjustment. And those tended to be the problem children.

Children. Something that yet was a bone of contention between he and Reia. It was something she had danced around when that subject came up even inadvertently by others. Perhaps, though, that vacation had softened her heart to that possibility. He had been an engineer for many years, a regular officer, a chief engineer both at the Academy and on three different ships now, a civilian contractor on OP42, a project engineering manager on the construction of the Genesis, and even an XO many years past on the Atlantis. But he himself had never been a father. Lin, Thor’s previous host had been a mother of several children, but not him.
- Dagen, CE