The New and the Old

[Tachyon 0]

“The New and the Old”

Stardate 0508.27

Lieutenant (jg) Tandaris Admiran

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There were hardly words. Sometimes Tandaris wanted to clap his hands with wild joy; at other times he had an irresistible urge to scream with vexation. The transition and integration process was both easy at some times and terribly difficult at others. Overall, he chalked it up to the rush. Not even totally familiar with the systems, with nary a shakedown cruise beneath their belts, apparently the ship was being sent on an actual mission.

 

Admittedly the travel time would give them plenty of opportunity to become more accustomed to life on the Morningstar. Tandaris was already used to getting up in the crowded barracks and heading for engineering after the morning ablutions. In engineering, he’d take a look at the roster for the day, seeing which tasks needed to be performed before he went off duty. He was lately becoming quite interested in a multi-quadratic Lissepian algebra puzzle given to him by a friend at the Academy. It occupied a significant amount of his off-duty time, as every time he made a mistake, the puzzle reset itself—much like a Rubik’s cube with a nasty temper.

 

Leisure concerns aside, Tandaris was perplexed by the Morningstar's design. His opinions on the Morningstar's purpose varied as much as his experience with conflict and wars did. He personally was of the intellectual stance that peace was better than war, and conflict should be avoided—one of the reasons he joined Starfleet in the first place. Admiran had experienced the horrors of war first hand, and although it had not been a good experience, it had certainly been a lasting one.

 

The ship was beautiful and impressive, but Tandaris was extremely surprised at the modifications from a standard Intrepid-class. He wondered why they even bothered calling her an Intrepid-class vessel—modified or not. The ship’s internal workings had literally been redesigned from the ground up to accommodate the change in purpose. She was bristling with tactical weapons, both offensive and defensive; this necessitated an augmentation of the power distribution net and an improvement to the computer processing efficiency. All of this was a nice way of saying that Starfleet engineering had attempted to maximize results while cutting as many corners—and even cheating as many laws of physics—as they possible could.

 

The result was a paradox that Tandaris had to admire. A warship, the Morningstar was both tough and sturdy as well as delicate and fragile. Brilliantly imagined, she served her purpose well. The weapons had all been designed and installed in such a way that they could be serviced easily without major overhauls at starbases. The systems were like nothing Tandaris had seen before, although he could tell that numerous of the concepts had since been integrated into later starships. The Morningstar was truly a prototype in every sense of the word.

 

Still, she had quirks. Tandaris could already see that the power distribution grid would cause them strife in the future. Constantly on the verge of a cascade failure, the sheer amount of raw electroplasma pulsing through the veins of the Morningstar was something to be feared and respected. Although he would have appreciated the challenge, Tandaris was half glad that they had decided to forego installing the cloaking device, because the more he explored the power distribution grid, the more he discovered that it was already taxed to the limit serving the tactical and propulsion requirements of the ship.

 

All in all, Tandaris was starting to warm up to this tough little ship, although he regretted that such a warship had ever needed to be conceived, let alone constructed. Anxious to see her perform, he awaited their arrival at their destination and whatever adventure lay beyond. . . .