Meeting of the Minds

Posted on Sat Mar 26th, 2011 @ 8:53pm by Lieutenant Commander Aiden Roberts (KIA) & Ensign Jennifer Russo & Lieutenant JG Elizabeth Marion & Crewman Apprentice Sekera

Mission: Renegades
Location: Deck Four - Operations Conference Room
Timeline: After Senior Staff Meeting

Aiden excited the cargo bay one, which he had spent the last two hours auditing for accuracy. He walked down the corridor and entered the operations offices. It wasn't much really. The compartment consisted of a large conference room with a large work station at one end of the room sitting at the head of a long conference table. In the rear of the room, there were two offices. One office was reserved for him, which he rarely used while the other was meant for the operations officer on duty. Both offices rarely were used except during down time, and that was even rare due to his departments involved in bridge operations.

He walked the length of the room and tossed down a stack of PADDs where he planned on sitting. While use of the offices was rare, Aiden was quite fond of the conference room. It gave him a chance to pull the majority of his people in one room and get things sorted out, especially with a lot of new faces about. In the past prior to being stationed on the Arizona, Aiden used to have a departmental meeting before shit hit the fan when new orders came down. It helped get everyone on the same page, and also helped put a face on the people he was working it. Since this was a trial run for him on the Arizona, he decided to just pull in his key personnel.

Morgan Price, entered the conference room to find Lieutenant Roberts there already. Morgan had just transferred from Flight Control to Operations just a few days ago and was eager to meet the rest of the department.

"Lieutenant Roberts? Petty Officer 1st Class Morgan Price, Lieutenant Idrani transferred me to Operations a few days ago, I already have my bridge certifications and am a pretty good shuttle pilot." Morgan smiled as he presented his PADD to Lt. Roberts.

Aiden skimmed the PADD, and quickly extended a welcoming hand. "Always great to have another set of hands, happy to have ya. I'll have you scheduled in the rotation as soon as possible."

Lieutenant Junior Grade Elizabeth Marion rushed into the Conference Room, somewhat out of breath, "Sorry, took be forever to hunt down a relief on the bridge. The old man was in one of his moods and I really didn't think running off would be very wise..."

Liz took a seat at the conference table, still a bit out of breath as she did so.

Roberts was still reading through Price's transfer orders and qualifications, and offered a curt nod to Marion as she sat down. "No worries..., we're still waiting on some folks to seems. Help yourselves to something to drink if you want, you'll come to know my casual style with things in time..."

Jenn walked into the conference room, she had a good rest for the last couple days of the Shore Leave. Though she was refreshed and ready to get back to work, especially now that she was working well on her goal to earn that commission of hers. Though she did sort of like the job that she already had, it had quite a bit of responsibility and she really liked that. She helped literally make this ship run, and she also loved the training aspect of it and sharing her knowledge with those Enlisted crew of the ship.

She didn't say anything as she sat down at an empty chair, and placed the PADD she was carrying on the table.

The doors parted one last time shortly after the Warrant Officer had arrived, and the Bolian Quartermaster scurried in without a word. Sekera was anything but of a morning person, and often overslept. However, today he managed to find his way out of his bunk and make it here on time. The Bolian's stomach grumbled after having opted to skip a meal for the sake of being here on time

The Lieutenant offered a curt nod to the last two arrivals, before deciding to begin.

"Good Morning everyone... I know we have a small group here this morning, but I wanted to bring together the core members of the department to go over somethings for the week." Aiden paused to hand a stack of PADDs around the table. He wasn't much for organization, be for once he was proud of himself for the agenda he had laid out of the meeting. It was short and to the point.

"We have a new face with us starting today. You may have seen Petty Officer Price around the Arizona in the last few weeks, but he will be transitioning from Flight Control to Ops. I'm sure all of you will make yourselves available to Mr. Price, he comes with an impressive background that I am sure will add to the overall .. greatness of our department. Welcome Morgan.." Aiden paused before walking back to the front of the room. With the quick tap of a few buttons on the console, the conference room's main viewer activated.

"Thank you sir, I also wanted to add that Lieutenant Idrani liked to mix our shift rotations whenever possible, I'm accustomed to having to work different rotations whenever needed." Morgan added. "...I believe I've already met some of you prior to our shore leave on Pacifica"

"We also lost Lieutenant Three of Seven to the Engineering Department, so Marion you're back to second top dog below me. Miss Russo, if you could make the adjustments to the rotation effective immediately, I'd like to see Mister Price helping fill the gaps the Lieutenant left us."

"Yes sir," she said. "I also have not been on the rotation while I was getting control of my administrative role, I'd like to put myself back in the rotation once in a while if you don't mind sir," she said. "I'm also working on gaining my Officer of the Deck Qualification," she said. "Lieutenant Marion is helping me out with that," she added.

The Lieutenant nodded in approval, admiring the young lady's enthusiasm. He remembered being that eager and young.

"..I can help you with those Qualifications as well Ms Russo, Piloting a Prometheus Class is a bit trickier in MVAM than it is on another ship" Morgan added.

Aiden chuckled casually before adding in. "See, ..making friends already..." He paused for a few moments, before returning his gaze to his PADD trying to sort out where he left off. "Personnel changes, check. Shift rotations, double check. Ah - yes. I'm sure some of you might have heard through the rumor mill we are passing by Deep Space 10, way past the red line of the majority Federation space..." He stopped again for dramatic purposes this time. "Meet the Gavarian Frontier.. our new home away from home..."

The main viewer changed from the USS Arizona idle screen template to depict a region of space between Romulan and Cardassian borders. We are over ninety days at high way from the main expanses of Federation space, and we aren't exactly on the best terms with our neighbors. So.. what does this mean for us ladies and gentleman?"

Aiden liked to speak rhetorically, and often enjoyed answering himself. He wasn't fond of hearing himself speak but on the other hand act of answering himself played well to the sarcastic side of his personality. "We have to be on the top of our game folks. Resupply is going to be an ongoing issue while we are out on long jaunts of border patrol. I'd hate for us to have replicate every time we make a course correction or take a scrap on the hull." He turned towards Russo and Sekera. "Miss Russo, I'd like you to take lead on keeping our stores full. You have a pretty active role in the damage control efforts when things get hairy, so I'd like you to know what we have on board. Mr. Sekera here is still new, but I'm sure you two will learn from one another..."

"Aye sir," she said. "I think the inventory has been completed recently, it was a regularly scheduled sort of thing. I remember seeing something about it, but I didn't go too much into detail. I'll speak with Sekera sometime today and we'll get that under control," she said. She began to type something onto her padd, and then looked back up at the group.

Roberts tapped away on the console again as though it was a twentieth century piano, overemphasizing his hand movements when he finished adding an unnecessary flare to things. The screen of viewer changed once again, providing a more topical layover the region as a whole. The screen depicted the region of space in four different colored patterns.

"On the screen in front you'll notice this area of space has a hand full of stellar abnormalities. There are Neutron Stars in the yellow shaded regions, a nasty class two nebula in the green region, and in the regions denoted by red are pockets of asteroids varying in side. Like I said before we need to be on the top of our game considering the locals. Pirates and the stereotypical bad guys love to hide in areas such as these. While our sensor package is state of the art, it isn't nearly as sensitive as needed for this region as it could be. Mr. Price, I'd like you coordinate with Engineering on upgrading the sensor pallets for the forward array. The specs were relayed from one of the ships already operating in the region and shouldn't take long to implement. The faster the better, the boys in teal are already asking about when we will be able to free up the long range sensors for some preliminary scans on the areas astronomical sites."

"Question, what does intelligence have on these regional powers that we may run into? Knowing who we may be up against will go a long way towards tweaking our systems more efficiently" Marcus replied. "..if we're heading into an area filled with asteroids, are we going to make any changes to our shields as well?" Marcus thought about an incident where asteroids were used as projectiles to overload a ships shields in addition to disruptor fire. "..other than that,...I've got nothing else."

Aiden bit his lower lip, recalling a report he had read a while back detailing that exact scenario. It seemed so science fiction to him at the time he had read it, but here was a possible real life situation. "To be quite honest, we haven't got much as of yet from Intel. I know the Captain has requested our folks make some inquires into the natives, but as of right now we're effectively in the dark. I'll bring up your point with Major DeVries later today when she and I meet. My words of advice to all of you is be prepared for the worst. The Old Man is concerned with us running short on supplies if we stick our feet into something we shouldn't."

Finally finished with what he wanted to get through, Aiden took a seat at the head of the table. "Questions, comments, concerns...? Oh that reminds me. Mr. Price since you'll be working with engineers on the sensors, I'd also like you help in the effort of converting over unused space on board to house supplies. Sekera and Russo, make arrangements to fill up the space he clears. We have alot of empty bunks out there since we aren't at full stength, so we shuffling around people will be minimal."

When the room was silent for an awkwardly long period of time, Aiden simply stood and took one last look around the table. "Let's get to it then.."