Be it ever so humble

Posted on Tuesday October 6th, 2020 @ 12:00pm by Captain Tobias Bishop III

Mission: The Forgotten Outpost
Location: Various

The ship glided to a stop one kilometer out from the massive doors that guarded the internal docking bays of Deep Space Three. Tobias had been told the station would be in 'rough shape', but that did not even begin to describe what he was currently looking at.

Main power was reported to be online, but the vast majority of the station remained in 'grey' mode. Only the very minimum of lights were on, and all signs pointed to life support being functional, but this was the very definition of a 'dead' station.

A 'work bee' buzzed silently past the main viewer on a mission to do who knows what, oblivious to the arrival of the new starship in its area of operations.

Captain Thornton had been kind enough to allow the Colonel to take the bridge for the last leg of their voyage. For the last two days, the ship had been running on an internal clock that was intended to match that of the station, and both said it was 'the middle of the night' as Colonel Bishop order the young woman (girl really) staffing communications to open a channel to Starbase Operations.

He primitively had ordered her to put whomever answered on the main viewer.

The view screen lit and was filled with the dirty, unshaven face of a man wearing (in only the loosest definition of the word) an operations mustard uniform.

"Very funny Jenkins. I don't have time for this bulls...." his words trailed off as he looked up and saw the scowling face of a very displeased MACO Colonel staring back at him.

The flinch that went through the Ops officer was almost enough to take him out of his chair before he managed to recover his wits and start over.

"Colonel Bishop, Sir." he stammered. "We weren't expecting you until the end of the week."

"Well, I'm here now." Tobias answered, "And I would be ever so grateful if you could issue us docking clearance."

The chaos that ensued in the next moments would have been comical, if not for the astounding level of incompetence that accompanied it.

A dropped coffee cup, a string a profanity and a dropped call all led to the Starship being guided into 'Internal Docking Billet Alpha Three" and the crew making preparations to start the move in process.

:: To Be Continued ::

Colonel Tobias Bishop III
Commanding Officer
Deep Space Three