Stepping Out (rolecall)

Posted on Sat Jan 11th, 2025 @ 12:19pm by Lieutenant JG Maxine Mckull

Mission: Season 6: Episode 5: A church beyond heaven
Location: Chief Flight Controller's Office
Timeline: MD5, 2100
583 words - 1.2 OF Standard Post Measure

Would she ever get a break again?

Max paced around in the office she'd been thrust into. The past few days had seemed both to have flown by and crawled by her all at once. She had hardly had a moment to rest between reading readiness reports, logging her activities, keeping tabs on the activities of others in her section, investigating her leads in the missing officer case and maintaining her bridge duties. Now, she found herself dealing with yet another matter. Routine patrols around the Elysium's airspace, conducted by the vessel's fighter squadron.
In the center of the room, a holographic representation of the Elysium was being projected, showing the positions of the fighters relative to it as represented by blue dots, and white lines designating their assigned flight paths.
As she stared at the hologram, the fighters only just having emerged from the bay, she couldn't help but reflect. The last time they had encountered a... threat? Was aboard the church vessel. Evidence that someone... or something, had been there, which was decidedly unwelcome. The helmet, the turret, the data, all presented a picture that was both alarmingly clear and concerningly allusive. A creature of some sort, which appeared immune from conventional weapons, while leaving few traces of its existence behind. But was it the cause of the disappearance of the mystery officer? Would it strike again? Would the Elysium be in more or less danger than those unfortunate souls aboard the alien vessel they had encountered?

In truth, Max had no answers, and if there was one thing she didn't like, it was not knowing the answers to questions, especially of this severity.

As the fighters began to take formation around the Elysium, Max stepped away from the hologram and the closed her end of the communication link she had established with the fighter squadron. Approaching the replicator she instructed it. "Ginger tea with a lemon."
The computer beeped to signal its understanding of the order before, with a soft hum and a shimmer, her requested drink materialized on the small tray in front of her. Max took it, lifted the drink to her face and let the steam waft over her skin as she examined the hologram. Moving back to her desk, she set her drink down next to her terminal and tapped at it, taking note of the initial readings from the fighter squadron. So far, space around the Elysium looked clear, and while normally Max would've found that emptiness a relief and sign of safety, today it was simply an unnerving reminder of the unknowns they were faced with. Would they lose another crew member before they answered all their questions? Or worse yet, what if they already had? What if all the steps she had laid out not that long ago in her initial briefing to the other officers under her charge proved to be pointless, expending their time and hers for no gain?
Max sighed and lifted her tea to her lips. She felt helpless, but it soothed her nerves slightly. Maybe all of this was simply an exercise in futility. Maybe none of it would end up mattering. The Elysium was alone here after all. Or maybe, just maybe, some good could come out of this. Max didn't know how things would turn out, but she had an odd feeling that this patrol, in one way or another, wouldn't be an uneventful one, even if that dullness was in fact an event of note...