A Need for Speed

Posted on Sun Aug 6, 2017 @ 8:38am by Lieutenant Corsa Yeros & Lieutenant Marisa Cheshire

Mission: Strange Matter
Location: Deck 46, Fighter Bay
Timeline: MD 25 10:30

After meeting the XO and getting his medical checkup Corsa decided to stash his gear in his allocated bunk before taking a trip down towards the ship's allocated fighter bay. Or at least one of them. He moved from the turbolift after it deposited him onto the chosen deck.

Corsa ambled along the corridor towards one of the bays and since he had to follow the MSD displays to know exactly where he was going it took him a while as he paused at each of the screens to ensure he hadn't missed a turn before he ended up in the bay.

A small sigh of wonderment left his mouth as he saw the a Valkyrie parked on a maintenance bed for what he assumed was just a general tuneup. He moved towards the vessel but kept his distance enough, circled the crafted and looked at its underbelly. "So this is what I'll be carrying..."

Back and forth along a marked out causeway, cargo dollies hauled spares from the large lift at the far end of the bay to their craft along with the odd opportunistic crewman or pilot. A causeway that the Lieutenant was loitering on. It wasn't even a consideration for the dolly drivers, but when the lift brought in Valkyrie fresh from the void, now he was obstructing.

It's pilot still sat in it's cockpit with the canopy open, taxing it to a vacant maintenance bay when she noticed the obstruction. Leaving the throttle set to a very low speed she removed her helmet, letting her golden hair cascade down, and stood up in the foot well. "Hey buddy!" she called out, cupping her hands "Other side of the yellow line if you want to gawk!" she punctuated it with a slight chuckle.

The sudden call out made Corsa jump slightly before he looked up at the source of the sound. His brow furrowed in confusion and then he looked down at the line he was standing on the wrong side of. "Sorry!" he called back and hopped over to the other side.

Corsa rubbed the back of his neck sheepishly and made a quick movement over to where he should have been standing. "I guess when I see something I like I get a little tunnel visioned! Never seen one up close that wasn't on a computer screen!"

"I gathered! You look like a tourist!" She shot with a wide smile before bending down to the front console. A few manipulations of the controls later she reappeared with with a bag over her shoulder and her helmet presumably left on her seat. The woman then hopped out of the cockpit and sailed down to the deck much slower than was natural thanks to the inertial dampener in her suit.

The fighter carried on its own behind her as the pilot approached the man. When she was close enough she offered a hand clad in a white glove "Marisa Cheshire." she said exuberantly. She took note of the uniform and the pips on his collar. After quickly processing and coming to a conclusion and blurted out thoughtlessly "You are a tourist."

For herself, there was little in the way of markings to indicate her position. A few tubes running from armored plates on her white and red suit that contained it's systems, though to the observant there was a small golden insignia on the left side of her chest plate instead of the silver the rest of the pilots were sporting.

"A tourist now, pilot when I get to the bridge." replied the Traxian who took the offered hand and gave it a firm shake. After a few vertical movements he let Marisa's hand go and placed his hands behind his back and clasped them together. "Lieutenant Corsa Yeros. I'm the new Chief Flight Control Officer. I basically try not to smash the ship into things."

A smile touched his lips before it disappeared behind an impassive expression. His uniform was well kept; boots buffed to a gleam along with his rank pips and comm badge. He did notice the golden badge on the pilot's chest rig and gave a small nod towards it. "I don't recognise that badge. Never seen Starfleet pilots before. The Berlin never had any. Some kind of medal?"

Marisa's posture was almost identical, though a tiny bit more relaxed compared to Corsa's, and she had to crane her neck ever so slightly to look at him. "Oh, that." she said, looking down "Recent reg' updates they're rolling out, direct from the desk drivers at Star' Com'" she continued with a little exasperation "The CAG needs some kind of insignia to delineate them from those they command, probably to make them priority targets for capture or elimination if we go down or something like that."

A small sound of approval came from Corsa's mouth. "I suppose I approve of these new regulations. It's shiny. Maybe that was their intent? Besides it does do the job to mark you above the rest. People are often inspired by their leaders fighting next to them or even being near them. Even if they don't know you personally."

"It's a little hard to see this thing from behind a canopy." Marisa said with a slight grin, looking back down at the icon for a moment. "But you've got a point. I didn't consider that angle before." She looked back up at Corsa with a humbled smile.

Corsa turned towards the Valkyrie a little more and gave it a studious look over. "I figured I would see what I've read about. Specification reports don't ever do a ship justice and I also figured it would be good to see how you'd like me to work in tandem with your group? Even prior to Starfleet I never got to work closely with our own fighters."

Marisa wore a pensive expression before she walked towards the fighter on the maintenance jack. "Well, they say nothing beats experience." She said, looking back at Corsa before calling out to the mechanics.

"Hey Chief!" she called out to a sandy haired Bajoran man in a yellow jumpsuit who was working on a panel on a wing "got a tourist who wants to sit in the cockpit. That okay with you?"

"Just don't activate the RCS system and that should be fine." He said, looking up for a moment before returning to his work.

The military dignity broke when Corsa smiled with utmost glee at the acceptance to being able to actually sit inside the fighter's cockpit. He moved from Marisa and climbed up the boarding ladder secured to the side before settling into the chair.

He was careful not to touch anything, even going as far to ensure that his knees didn't crush the control column or touch a panel. He looked around to get a pilot's perspective; it was snug but not overly small. "Y'know this thing looks amazing! How agile is she?"

"Valks can do a 360 rotation about 2.1 seconds." Marisa said as she followed the Lieutenant up the ladder. "0 to full impulse in 8.3 seconds, of course that's in hard vacuum away from any major gravitational bodies." Her shoulder was peaking over the canopy seal she lent in and over Corsa to a series of manual switches on the other side.

The 2 screens directly in front of him and 2 either side flickered to life and the text LCARS 7.2.664 Booting into Maintenance mode. After a short moment each screen showed a different system. The two in front of him showed weaponry and sensors, the small one on the left had a communications tab and the one on the right had a truncated version of a Master Systems Display, listing all of the major systems and their integrity. Most of them had disabled next to them.

"I'm sure the screens make sense to you," Marisa continued. "The stick near your right hand is roll and pitch, trigger controls weapons, hat switch is trim, and the rest of the buttons are hot keyed. I put com and weapon toggles on mine." She then pointed to the stick in front of his left hand "That one is the left/right/up/down RCS control," then to the big leaver directly next to that "That's your throttle, with controls for the warp drive, and yaw is controlled with the foot pedals. None of that haptic keypad stuff." Marisa said proudly "Real controls."

It was strange to go from a nice open area like the bridge with a wide keyboard to play around, manage and customise to his requirements and preferences. Where complex manoeuvring was done by a computer most of the time and all Corsa was required to do was monitor, make adjustments as needed and react to changing circumstances.

Even Traxian vessels had the same passive approach and setup for helm controls and while he could activate manual controls for the Triumphant there was regulations upon regulations of reasoning when and why it should be done not to mention the risk of shearing the ship in half if he didn't concentrate on the structural integrity of the ship.

Yet here was something most might find archaic or quaint. The idea of a biological pilot being in full control. Every little detail was drunk in, every display panel, dial and switch studied before he spoke. "When I was sixteen I had the choice of what I wanted to do with my commission. I figured I wanted to study navigation, pilot one of our destroyers or cruisers. After all every ship needs a pilot. I never even considered the Fleet Fighter Arm. Chasing down enemy craft at breakneck speed, running them down into a pile of smoking ruin. I'll be honest Cheshire; I'm a bit jealous."

The tall alien gave a sidelong grin at the CAG before turning his eyes back to the display for the weapon systems. "But mine is bigger."

Marisa had to cover her mouth to stop herself from laughing. She cleared her throat and swallowed before responding "You know, a lesser person might make the implication you're overcompensating." She said with a Cheshire grin "But, yeah, I hear you. I mean you've got an over romanticised idea about what it's like but I hear you. In friendly territory we just do interceptions and inspections. We're really just glorified cops." She said with a shrug before refocusing on him with an intense expression "But there is nothing like direct, responsive control. The only thing keeping you from being atomised being your wits."

"I like to think of it as just pointing out the obvious." Corsa responded with a smirk. "Besides I have a rather romantic idea about what this is all about. Your people might be old hats at the whole space exploration thing but we're just dipping our toes into the greater Alpha Quadrant. Everything is new and shiny to us. Even this piece of hardware."

For a moment Corsa just looked around before he spoke. "Think you'll take me out on a spin in one? As long as the CO doesn't mind that is. I'm not sure he'd like the idea of me getting drawn away from the main helm."

"I'm sure I can swing that." Marisa replied with an affirmative nod "Somehow I doubt the Commodore will complain about an interdepartmental team building exercise." Her inner politician was already considering the best angle for which to sell this of the very slight chance Aravan did object. "When can you fit in a couple of hours?"

"I can send over my duty rota to you and we can find space. It is not as if I have many different places to split my off-duty attention or have any hobbies on the holodeck to keep up." mused Corsa with a small grin. "But I guess you'd need to replicate me a suit. I'm a pretty tall person and getting into one of your suits might be a bit of a squeeze."

Corsa leaned back a little more into the cockpit chair and hummed a little. "I've never met the Commodore. What's he like? Is he going to be fine with his helm chief playing with fighter pilots even if it isn't work related? He might be worried you'll corrupt me away from my chance at being a pristine bridge officer."

"Jeeze." Marisa said, taken aback with a wide grin. "Do I come across as a bad influence or something?"

"Like the very women my mother warned me about, CAG." teased Corsa as he smiled a little more this time. "First it's all interdepartmental training then it's taking shots from some illicit still your deck hands have installed in some tool shed somewhere."

"There is a perfectly good bar in the arboretum and I'm a firm believer in supporting local businesses, thank you very much." Marisa said with thinned lips as she folded her arms.

"Anyway." she continued after a moment, returning to her relaxed tone "I'm not a mind reader, but while the Commodore can be a little severe I don't think he'll have an issue with one or two supervised joyrides. Just make sure you send me your measurements through with your roster, you go in one of these with out a proper suit and you can get pulverised pretty quickly."

"Roger that CAG. I'll send you my length and width so I don't become a red smear on the canopy." teased Corsa as he stepped up onto the footwell and looked down at Marisa. "I'll uh, need you to wiggle down so I can climb down. We can see about that drink. I need to explore the amenities anyway otherwise I'll go stir crazy in my quarters between shifts and high-G turns."

"Roger that." Marisa said before reaching forward again to deactivate the computer. She then step off the ladder and, using the handrail as a slide pole, came down to the deck in the few seconds it took for the displays to power down.

Corsa swung his leg over the cockpit's threshold and then slid down the ladders as Marisa had done before turning around to face her again. "So. For my original question...how best can we work towards me flying the ship and for your pilots? Do you have developed deployment tactics that I need to know about?"

Marisa put a pensive finger to her lips "Well," she started after a moment "Their are thousands of little things that I can think of but are kind of hard to explain, but probably the main one is Combat Landings. If we're landing to resupply and all of the sudden you pull up during short final we can end up slamming into the deck at one hundred m-p-s. So before you do any hard maneuvers just take a glance at your scanner, check the ATC channel and see if you've got some fighters lining up for approach and if so advise us before you move. Saying that" she shrugged with a slight sign "Your priority is the Triumphant, so if we have an accident like that during an emergency or combat I'm not going to hold it against you."

For a moment Corsa was silent as his mind wheeled away at a better solution. Watching a scanner and listening to a comms channel during a battle was an unacceptable set of distractions. Yet it was true that if he performed sudden, complex evasive actions as a fighter was about to set down he'd be responsible for the lost of a fighter, its pilot and the damage done to the ship as a whole. "I wonder if there's a way to...cut down the response time on that. Traxian ships have a dedicated bridge officer that act as a direct link to the fighter squadrons so if the helmsman does make a sudden, erratic turn the order to wave off is given prior. However that would require we train someone specific for that task...how about a real-time link? When I alter course your fighters gain an update on their HUD with an amended trajectory meaning they can adjust and land regardless or wave off rather than wait until the last moment?"

"We've already got something like that, when we do a test drive you can take notes and let me know if you think there are any changes that need to be made." Marisa explained. "And we already have a direct link, just not on the bridge, it would be too distracting for the rest of the departments. The issue is sometimes it's just too late for a wave off." She continued with a shrug. "We can set up a special channel on which the ATC operators can advise you directly of a landing, or something else."

"I can discuss it with the Commodore when it's more suitable. But thanks for the tour. Let me know if that joyride gets signed off. Until then; anything you need from me, CAG?" asked the Traxian.

"Not that I can think of." Marisa said with a slight sigh and a soft smile "Don't trust nobody and don't do nothing dumb."

"Well, I can try!" he said with a grin, moving out of the flight bay.