Deputised

Posted on 07 Jul 2018 @ 4:58am by Lieutenant Commander Rafe Cassidy (Jan 2389 - TRNSFR After Gorn War)

Mission: Ne Me'e Laua Na Paio - Heroes & Villains
Location: Worker Bee Delta-4
Timeline: 1200, 13 Jan 2389

"Alright, alright, that's not gonna work." Cassidy squirted water into his mouth from the squeezy bottle, careful to not let any spill because that became a real pain in zero-g. "I'll try a dorsal approach; I should be able to cut away the debris pinning her in from there."

"Be advised, Delta-4; this model of haulage freighter will have plasma vents right under the dorsal hull. Trust your sensors if you get any heat readings or you'll blow us all to kingdom come."

"Copy that, Control."

It was easier, when he was doing this kind of focused, precision flying, to kill the artificial gravity. The tug of gravity could draw his attention down, make it harder to think of space in three dimensions. Perhaps this was something real, or perhaps it was only habit from his own experiences, but it still worked for him.

Only a few hours into their time on Xavier, he'd already put himself to work. Clearing a debris field of dangerous or valuable wreckage was hardly that different to mining in an asteroid belt. It took a lot of precision, a lot of delicacy, and a good understanding of all of the myriad factors in play. He figured most people in the Fleet didn't have his experience, so he'd got himself down to the flight bays and volunteered himself into a worker bee to help move one of the more intractable pieces of wreckage.

Perhaps he could have been supervising, and no doubt that would come later. His excuse would be that he'd be able to give guidance better if he'd felt his way through the wreckage himself. In truth, he just preferred to be hands on.

Besides, it gave him a chance to multi-task.

"Computer, compare this time frame with all new arrivals on Hawaii who boarded within... forty-eight hours of the transmission, either way. And then I want to know of any transmissions they received in that period."

Being seconded to security had sounded a lot more interesting. Special investigation work; he'd posed in front of the mirror with finger-guns and everything. In truth, he suspected Stevens had stitched him up for the boring legwork which still needed a human brain to remove extraneous information.

So he could do it from here, as he guided his little worker bee around the hulking freighter that really needed removing from this patch of debris. Or, at the least, he needed to do something to stop its spin, but that would require docking with the wreckage and ideally firing the ship's own thrusters. Different work, more delicate than carving it free so it could be safely tugged.

Now he had to turn the dampeners back on, because he had to match the bee to the freighter's rotation and he didn't fancy trying to fly pinned to a bulkhead. To anyone outside, to anyone watching through a Xavier viewport, his little worker bee would be corkscrewing through space on its approach. To him, the freighter hull that filled his view was steady as he drew closer.

"Alright, Control. Clamping onto the freighter's hull." A large, jagged section of what had once been a Xavier docking pylon had impaled the freighter. He wasn't yet sure if he'd be better off severing the metal itself or carving through the freighter's hull, though with the warning about plasma vents he was loath to try the latter.

The bee clamped onto the hull with a thunk, and now his view was filled with the rest of the debris field, spinning wildly, Xavier flashing in and out of the corner of the screen. He'd gone to the Academy with pilots who'd found this kind of movement utterly sickening; those who hadn't adapted had washed out. But he'd been doing this kind of flying for as long as he could remember, and somehow overcome all human instincts that liked everything to move in a synchronicity logical to Earth gravity.

Cassidy knew not everything had to behave as your gut expected.

Fifteen minutes later, he'd been reminded even more of that lesson as he checked his sensors and, with a sigh, killed the cutting lasers on the worker bee. He keyed his comms. "Control, this is Delta-4. I'm not making a dent on this pylon and with my sensor readouts I don't fancy trying to extract it with those plasma vents in the way."

"Copy that, Delta-4. Return to -"

"Oh, I'm not done." He hit the controls and his bee jumped back into the void as it detached from the freighter's hull. "I reckon if I get to the aft I can fire the manoeuvering thrusters on this thing, kill its rotation at the least. Give me another hour."

Control didn't argue, and he let his little bee bounce along the hull towards his new destination, keeping one eye on the data readout from the computer's analysis. He'd made sure he took a job where he could stay in comms range of Hawaii to crack on with the investigation, and wasn't sure if he was regretting it. This was going to take a while.

"Okay, computer," Cassidy sighed. "Let's also add in anyone who checked into sickbay in this time period..."


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Rafe Cassidy, LT, SF
CONN