Early Morning Monitor

[Thau'Shir Mrkath 0]

The dark furred CAG had been awakened by the Flight Operations duty officer in the wee hours of the morning. It was not an emergency, thank the Great Hunter, but nonetheless Mrkath quickly dressed and padded through the corridors heading for the dorsal hull. After a few moments and a quiet lift ride, he entered the dimly lit, tech-filled room and headed straight for the overview display, his jaw stretching wide in a yawn.

 

"She's in the Boyington, sir," said Ensign Atralin from his position at the desk.

 

"Ah," Mrkath responded, nodding to the blue-skinned Andorian ensign. "It's about time she took it out." After a quick scan of the overview display he spotted her location and who she was with. "Who's on standby?" He asked Atralin.

 

"Ackersly, Timmons and Sivet, sir. They're suited up and ready, and I've already raised them to five minute status."

 

"Good, good," Mrkath replied. He moved over to the communications desk and, after rifling around a drawer for a while, extracted his Caitian-designed wireless earpiece and fitted it in. "Switch me on," he ordered the CPO at comms, and then wandered over to an empty station to monitor the situation more closely.

 

He knew that Captain Calestorm would be infuriated if she knew about the kind of monitoring she was under. It wasn't, in this case, a result of mistrust or believing too strongly in her call-sign of "Crash." Since he was informed of the incident on New Topeka, he had installed the standing order to: A) inform him any time she went out in a craft if he wasn't already aware and B) to increase alert status and make sure the most capable pilots were placed on standby. There was also a threat of disembowelment should anyone speak of it outside of Flight Ops, lest Calestorm get wind of it.

 

Mrkath pulled up the video feeds from the Goshawk nearby, setting them up on the left-side monitor to keep an eye on things in more detail than the floating icons of an overview can manage. On the right he pulled the Creek's tactical sensor feed up, making sure that the threat board was squeaky clean.

 

After a little while he purred his appreciation at the flip-six she performed to study a buoy, and then chuckled at her admonition to the young pilots out on patrol with her. There was only one problem with the statement though: they wouldn't have any skin left for her to take off after he was done with them should they try the maneuver.

 

He watched and listened as she gave pointers and answered questions like a good veteran pilot, making the occasional note of everyone's performance on an encrypted file loaded on his iComanche. As he'd already been through this routine at all hours over the last few days as the Captain availed of the opportunity to get off the ship, he'd discovered that, after getting some more time to shake off the rust, she was a very accomplished pilot. That didn't mean that he wouldn't continue to put the pressure on her when they were flying together. He did that with all his pilots to some degree, and the better the pilot the more he pushed them to continue to excel instead of becoming complacent.

 

A little while later Calestorm and the patrol were on their way in to land as the next patrol shift was prepping for launch. Satisfied that no Orion pirates were going to jump out from behind a space bush to accost the CO, he reset his console, stashed his earpiece and told the duty officer to return to normal standby status. After bidding the Andorian a quick adieu, he headed off to get a breakfast and a very large mug of coffee to make up for the early start to the day.