The Great Unknown (Rolecall post)

Posted on Thu Jan 11th, 2024 @ 9:54am by Lieutenant JG Maxine Mckull

Mission: MISSION 0 - History Speaks
Location: U.S.S Elysium
Timeline: Four months ago
589 words - 1.2 OF Standard Post Measure

Well, here they were. The middle of nowhere. Thanks to an encounter with a quantum filament, and Miraj jumping the ship into both warp and slipstream at the same time, they had been hurled further than any starship had gone before.
Although Max had remained distant, she could tell the crew was feeling a sense of loss, of hopelessness. Strangely, she did not.
Instead, she felt... intrigued, perhaps excited. The Elysium was in greater than critical condition, but the ship was intact. They had no idea where they were. But perhaps, among these unfamiliar stars, Max could find a lead on what she was looking for.
Her reason for joining Starfleet was simple. She wanted to locate a treasure world. In a sense, she had a whole new avenue to investigate, all the way out here. If she could triangulate their position- but then, it wouldn't be an easy task with so many systems offline.
That was what she was supposed to help with today. As an engineering minor, and second to top in the flight control department, Max made sure the systems were all performing as they should. Sometimes without direction. Today's lucky recipient of her attention was the deflector array. Badly damaged, she doubted she could fix it in one day. But at the very least, she would perform an inspection. Every repair effort began with an assessment, after all.
Max made her way through dark, ruined corridors, picking her way through debris as she considered her next move. She needed to get a fix on familiar stars. Any stars. Perhaps, she could learn where they were in relation to the legends.
But then, she realized, there was another issue. Something she had somehow not considered before. How would the crew react? How would the Captain react? The commodore? How could she convince them to head off in a direction, strictly for her own purposes?
As she arrived outside deflector control, she huffed softly to herself and frowned deeply.
She probably couldn't.
As Max saw it... she had two options. Come clean and risk the wrath of the crew in their weakened emotional state- tell the captain why she was here and ask permission to go off on her little hunt. It wasn't as if they had anywhere else to go right now, anyway. Elysium was barely space worthy.
Or, she could wait. Watch, and hope that the opportunity presented itself for her to slip in a harmless suggestion. Hope that it worked out, that she could find a way to investigate on her own, as the need and the opportunity arose.
But then what if it did? How would she justify it?
Max came to a stop outside deflector control. The doors, it seemed, were not responding. She tried the manual release... no luck there. It seemed, for the moment at least, she wasn't getting in.
Well, she refused to leave without accomplishing at least something. That was what restoring the Elysium would take. Small accomplishments from everyone, pulling their weight aboard. Those small victories, Max knew, could lead to larger ones. So she'd consider her victory for the moment getting the doors to respond.
She set about doing so, spending no less than an hour trying to get through. But it seemed the solution would allude her for the moment. Just as the solution to her own personal objectives continued to throw roadblocks in her thought paths. Maybe what she needed was some sleep.
They all needed sleep. At the moment, it was a luxury.