A Date With Destiny

[Commodore Moose 0]

"A Date With Destiny"

September 12, 2154

 

They waited in a meeting room next to the Observation Lounge. The noise from the crowd was palitable and objects outside the window flashed into view as the artificial light from the cameras and holoprojectors seeped through the window. Fitzgerald M. "Bull" Moose was expecting a little hoopla when the Challenger launched, but nothing like this.

 

But then, he thought, why shouldn't there be hoopla. They had achieved the unthinkable and built a warp 5 capable starship in under three months. They had unified the shipyards of Mars with the laboratories of Earth, and now the colonists and the 'groundhogs' were experiencing a sense of unity that hadn't been seen since the first Mars colony had been settled. And they had faced down both the Vulcans and the Andorians so that neither race was questioning their right to be in space. Yes, the humans had earned their 'hoopla'.

 

But it came with great sacrifice too. Many had left their homes to construct the ship, and had worked around the clock to meet the schedule. Some had even died. He could still hear Leslie Yerington in his head, reading the names of the victims in the Klingon terorist attack: Kroells, Zhu, Davis, even the Vulcan commander E'Shok. They had all given their lives so that this day could come. He wondered if one of the cameras in the next room belonged to Yerington; if she'd come to report the 'rest of the story'.

 

And he looked at the eighty men and women in the room with him. The emotions varied on their faces: excitement, nervousness, fear. It was inevitable that some of them would die. Moose himself may die. But no matter their age or experience or ethnic origins, one thing they all had in common was that they wouldn't miss this for anything. The warp 5 ship would take them to new worlds and new civilizations, and they would go boldly wherever that trek took them.

 

His thought were interupted by Yeoman Alces, who reached up to fiddle with Moose's collar. "What are you doing, Mirona?"

 

"I'm fixing your collar, sir. I've been watching old movies, and it seems that someone always does this to a man on an important occasion."

 

"Why?"

 

"I haven't a clue, sir."

 

Moose smiled. He didn't have a clue either; about what they would encounter or how they would deal with it. But he knew they would, somehow, as human pioneers had for millenia. That was also tradition.

 

"Let's go," he said loudly to the crew assembled. "We have a date with destiny, and it's not good to make your date wait too long." And with that, he opened the door to the meeting room and entered the sea of camera flashes.

 

Commodore Fitzgerald M. "Bull" Moose

Commanding Officer

Challenger, NX-05