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Mreh K'hal

Hot Dogs and Hard Drives

They had parked. Again. Mreh, remembering the talk of the young pilots back in the Academy, couldn't fathom how anyone could think that being a FCO for a Starfleet ship could be remotely in the category of "hot-dogging." The job, especially on a capital ship, consisted mostly of inputting where you want to go and letting the computer autopilot get you there, with a lot of looking at numbers to make sure that it was doing what it was supposed to. Then, when you arrive, usually at a planet, you told the computer where and what kind of orbit you wanted then it did that. Then you watched the ship's marker go in an ellipse until it was time to go back to plan A and tell the ship where you wanted to go next.

 

Even most combat maneuvers consisted of preset, computer controlled flight. The fun bit was when you got to make those maneuvers up on the fly. Though of course getting the mass and volume of a Starfleet capital ship to dance like a ballerina was practically impossible half the time, and the other half you were risking splitting the ship in two if you did go for it, so you only did it when circumstances said you'd die otherwise. All in all, if you want to hot-dog it, fighters are the way to go.

 

Since Mreh's flight experience came out of his desire to be a well-rounded physician, he'd never been of the hotshot group. On top of that, as a Caitian, he wasn't terribly fond of doing anything dog related. Most of his flight time as a doctor came in shuttles and runabouts, though he did get to fly an Olympic Class once during a short stint on the Nobel when he was a roving medic stationed from DS9. His enjoyment of flying though had kept him current on his original certifications, and field certifications from holodeck training in other ship classes, both large and small came along the way. That opened up his lateral move to flight control.

 

His short stint on the Sovereign Class Excalibur-B didn't thrill him overmuch. The ship was too long, in his opinion, and it never handled well. Starfleet got a D- grade in his view on that class. After the transfer to the Norway Class Raleigh, he'd only just whetted his appetite for flying. Once he'd discovered that the Excalibur-B was going to be scrapped and they'd be getting an Akira Class, he'd purred like a kitten for nearly a week.

 

The Excalibur-C was much more fun to fly, even in A to B mode. The few times he'd really had an opportunity to push the ship's maneuverability hadn't disappointed him, either. Still, he was grateful for the changes in department structure that allowed him to take on some operations duties. It filled out the duty shift so he could feel more involved, especially when they parked or were in warping from one place to the other. When the structure shifted again, putting him under the aegis of Command and keeping the administrative operations duties, he'd been thrilled. While Commander Teykier had been a good boss, being part of the science department just felt wrong.

 

Now, as the ship was nestled into orbit around a brown dwarf while they waited for their reconnaissance probes and fighter squad to report on the layout around the Black Marsh, and around the occasional bump from a gravitational eddy from the star, Mreh pored through the navigational charts they'd received through the upload from the archives. There was a wealth of data there that needed updates, as the charts were in some cases older than the societies of the species he worked with. He'd feed the original data into the computer and have it use all of the science known to Starfleet to move the stars to the best approximation of their current location.

 

He could easily fob this off over to science and let the astrometrics lab play with it, but he enjoyed watching the stars shift and nebulae expand on his screen while he monitored the orbit. Of course it was all there for them to do if they pulled it up, but he'd rather oversee what he thought might come in handy personally. The incoming data from sensors was matched to the computer projections continually, allowing for adjustments to the update protocols.

 

Meanwhile the computer hummed away on decks 7 and 8 as data was picked and analyzed from the archives by all the departments. Apportioning the computer time amongst them was a minor headache, as everyone wanted in but there was only to go around. Science got the biggest chunk, naturally, as they had the widest scope and the archives held data most applicable to them. How Commander Teykier managed to divvy it up amongst all the disciplines he didn't know, though he wouldn't be surprised if there were some sulking scientists down below because they had to wait in line.

 

Tia had done a remarkable job organizing the upload and storage, and somehow they'd managed to pull up the entire upload without significant data loss. The temporary hard drives Engineering had cobbled together were working well, though they weren't as efficient as the main computer. Hopefully they could get back to base and upload it to the more capable units aboard a starbase for dissemination sooner rather than later, though. One downside to this, Mreh figured, was that the database would open up so many questions that needed answering in the Gamma Quadrant that any chance the Excalibur could get an Alpha Quadrant assignment after their current one was over would be slim to none.

 

That calculation, however, was dependent on them finishing the mission to begin with. At this point they had a small thread to tug, but whether it would lead them to the magic carpet or merely unravel everything was yet to be seen. He half hoped for the latter, and that they could just wash their hands of it, be had a feeling the Universe wasn't going to be that accommodating.

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