Mission Briefing: A Meeting of Minds - Part I

Posted on Tuesday April 20th, 2021 @ 7:17pm by Lieutenant Commander Curzon Bennett & Captain Tobias Bishop III & Lieutenant Commander Albino "Viper" Jackson & Lieutenant Steven Edgeware & Lieutenant Jordan Chase & Lieutenant JG Talerian Maxx

Mission: Jeepers Creepers 2: Creepers In Flight
Location: Senior Officer's Conference Room
Timeline: 0700hrs

::ON::

Having arranged the meeting, Ithahr had thought it best to arrive at the Senior Officer's Conference Room on Deck 14 a little earlier than the rest. After all this was the first meeting he had arranged with for the senior staff to attend, and this would be his first opportunity to meet some of them. Humming to himself, Ithahr reflected that the bureaucratic part of the job was one he had come to enjoy. Writing and filing reports, and latterly arranging briefings and morning meetings suited him, and allowed him time to think.

It was certainly much quieter than his days in the Security Department where he'd started out all those years ago.

He moved around the room, ignoring the starfield beyond the viewports, and regarded it with a practiced eye, ignoring the crewmen who were stood waiting for his signal of approval or disapproval. The Andorian made a slow circuit, hands held behind his back, antennae twitching with amusement as he kept the junior staff waiting. In truth, they had done very well. PADDs containing the meeting's itinerary had been placed in front of every invited officer's seat, and a table of the station's finest produce stood off to one side. As Ithahr had yet to work out what everyone preferred to eat, he had ensured that there was a fair selection of pastries, fruits and other breakfast foods and drinks on hand. No replicated produce either, Ithahr preferred to take advantage of the Starbase's copious catering facilities.

'Acceptable,' he told the crewmen in his soft voice, nodding his approval. 'Dismissed.'

Waiting for the others to arrive, Ithahr moved to the window, consulting his own PADD as to the meetings itinerary to run through it once more.

Commander Bishop walked into the room carrying a steaming mug. If someone had been observing him, they would not be blamed for wondering if the mug was slowly becoming an actual part of his person, as it seemed to be omnipresent.

"Good Morning, Number One. All quiet on the Western Front?" he asked, with a slight smile as he took a seat in his traditional spot at the head of the table.

Looking puzzled for a moment, Ithahr didn't respond at once, before comprehension dawned, 'ah, yes, an old Earth novel I believe? ... yes I think we can say it's quiet.'

"Excellent." he replied, "That is exactly what I hoped to hear to get the day started." The Captain then took a sip from the seemingly omnipresent coffee mug.

As usual Svetlana was just leaving for the briefing, and this time she was wearing her Class "B" uniform which consisted of a short sleeve dark chocolate brown shirt, with epaulettes; her badge mounted above her right front breast pocket, and instead of wearing the regulation pants, she decided to wear a skirt of the same color as her long pants. However this had a wide 3/4" gold stripe down the outside seam, dark brown hosiery, and a pair of comfortable below the knees highly polished brown boots. Looking at herself in the mirror, Svetlana walked out of the office, and decided to stop for a tall cup of coffee.

Now with a tall 18 oz. mug of hot coffee in one hand, and her PADD in her other hand, Svetlana found the turbolift to the Commanders briefing room, and once inside she met Ithahr, who after a short but friendly conversation. Ithahr had to leave as there were a million and one thing to do before the briefing, and now alone, Svetlana sat down with her back to the wall.

Going back to her PADD she'd look up as the number of noisy Junior Officers all came in, found a seat and began to talk to their friends. However it was now getting hard to listen to her thoughts, raising her head she saw Trensu give a stare to some of his security officers, that seemed to quiet them down, then returned to what he was doing, but being young Starfleet Officers, the noise level of the briefing room began to climb, and just before the Commander, Trensu, or Ithahr could get up, Svetlana simply got up, rounded up six talkative Junior Officers, and began to talk to them. Within a few minutes all five faces turned ashen white, as she spoke, and when she left to return back to her seat, no one said anything.

Generally the Commanders briefing was usually open to the senior staff, but with the pending Conference slated for DS3, it was felt that with this an important conference, all of the senior commanders from every division meet to hear the latest's information that came from the Commander, and not from some rumor mill. Plus, with a Conference going on in the Station, it was mandatory that everyone be on the same page. And with the previous Bar Brawl involving the Klingons still fresh in the minds of everyone aboard the station; no one wanted a repeat of the incident, or accidentally start a war.

Chopper Langston was walking with his boss Alie to the briefing as it also called for the senior officers, but their junior officers as well. Langston was Alie's deputy in this case. Both had their coffee mugs and PADD's as they entered, "Good morning Sir's," and took their seats.

Walking into the Room with a PADD in hand Trensu gave a nod to everyone as he walked over to the replicator. " Vulcan green tea hot," he said. The cup appeared in the Vulcan style. He took the tea and walked over to his place at the table he Looked at the XO, "Sir," he said before sitting acknowledging the senior Officer in the room. He smiled and look at the others there, "good morning," he said as he picked the Padd up from the table and started to tap on it.

Ensign Jo Grant spent most of the morning fixing the replicators in the main recreation area. Occasionally they needed maintenance, but for some reason there was a sickly sweet green residue that was coating on the colmination matrix that was causing a malfunction in the transport pattern buffer. People were getting the wrong orders, for example a child ordered an orange soda and got French onion soup on the rocks. Once Jo had taken the machine apart and cleaned it, she reinstalled and recalibrated it, it worked fine. It wasn't that complicated just took time. At least she didn't have to crawl through a sewage tube or fix the waste reclamation unit, those were truly dirty jobs. Today she was invited to go to the staff meeting. She cleaned herself up and made her way to the conference room. She was just a lowly ensign but it turned out that she was the senior ops officer aboard the station.

"Good morning, Sirs," Jo said.

As the majority of senior officers, who were the senior heads of their divisions, along with their division chiefs and Petty Officers all converged into the briefing room, it was now getting to be a bit noisier than normal, and if one looked towards Svetlana, they would see that being noisy around her was not in their best interests, whoever one young Security Investigator from an off-going watch was already seated. As Lieutenant Naguma sat down, she sat there noticing everyone and especially Svetlana who was sitting by herself. Getting up Lieutenant Naguma said... "You must be dressed in the old style Pinks and Greens of the 21st Century US Army".

Surprised to see that there was at least one person who knew the uniform, Svetlana motioned for her to sit, and as Svetlana continued to watch the ever growing throng of people entering the briefing room, Lieutenant Naguma said, "I hope you pardon my intrusion, but my great four times removed Grandmother once wore the same uniform as you're wearing, but then she was in the US Army as a Brigadier General, Ma'am." Turning her head around, Svetlana began laughing, and in a few minutes both women were now comparing notes, the Lieutenant also had a secret, various family members during the centuries were either with local, state or federal Law Enforcement Agency, and were in various ranks. One such relative was the US Marshal in charge of the Federation's Western relocation zone, while another was with the Federation's Asian Zone.

For the next several minutes both Svetlana and Naguma were in a deep conversation, then finally she had to leave when one of her senior officers came into the room, leaving Svetlana at her table watching what was going on.

Lieutenant Sakaan, the Chief Intelligence Officer sauntered in a few moments later, nodding her greetings to the Captain and First Officer, before taking a seat next to Grant.

Hot on her heels was the Medical Officer assigned to the briefing, Doctor Robert Ambrose, an older man with greying hair and bristle-brush moustache in his sixties. Although he was trim, he was beginning to show the signs of being behind a desk for too long.

Running behind for the meeting, Lieutenant Chase arrived with a PADD in hand as she had been caught on a diplomatic call that ran over the anticipated scheduled time. As much as she would have loved to even have grabbed a replicated coffee, her main goal was just to reach the meeting before being too late. “Morning,” she murmured as she slipped into an empty seat and set her PADD on the table in front of her.

Lieutenant Talerian Maxx made his way in with a large coffee in hand and a hand covering his mouth as he yawned. He sat quietly and sipped his coffee as if it was his life line. One could easily see the black lines under his eyes from a lack of sleep and by the grip on his coffee and guess Maxx had been working extra long shifts.

Ithahr cleared his throat as he took his seat. He'd eschewed any refreshment, assuming it would interfere with the meeting's business.

To be continued...


::OFF::

Captain Tobias Bishop III
Commanding Officer
Deep Space Three

Lieutenant Commander Ithahr th'Shrannok
Executive Officer
Deep Space Three

Lieutenant Commander Albino "Ghost" Jackson
Group Commander
Deep Space Three

Lieutenant Dr Steven Edgeware
Chief Medical Officer
Deep Space Three

Lieutenant Ahksu Trensu
Chief Security & Tactical Officer
Deep Space Three

Lieutenant Jordan Chase
Chief Diplomatic Officer
Deep Space Three

Lieutenant JG Talerian Maxx
Chief Science Officer
Deep Space Three

Ensign Jo Grant
Operations Officer
Deep Space Three

SSA Svetlana Chekov, GS12
Starfleet Criminal Investigative Service
SCIS Team 95
Deep Space 3

Lieutenant Sakaan
Chief Intelligence Officer
Deep Space Three
[PNPC Lieutenant Commander Ithahr th'Shrannok]