U.S.S. Charon
Luna Class Starship
“Flying Blind – Part 1”
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“LIEUTENANT!”
A cold glass of water sunk its icy fangs into the warm skin of a peacefully slumbering Leon Athalla. The pilot jerked upwards his heart pounding as adrenaline surged through his body. Behind him stood Lt. Commander Hughes wearing an expression that could only mean one thing. He was in trouble…again.
“LIEUTENANT, you were scheduled for maintenance duty at 0700 in the main shuttlebay!”
Wiping cold water from his dripping face and chest, Leon was beyond annoyed. Belligerence was quickly approaching even if the officer was his superior. He had no right to wake the ship’s best combat pilot in such a crude, undignified manner.
“I am well aware of the duty assignments Commander”, Athalla fired back despite lingering confusion and disorientation. “I will report to my duties at the appointed time and I do not desire or require reminders from you!”
“Lieutenant it is 0930!”
Athalla squinted in the bright light to make out the chronometer on the far wall. It couldn’t be. He had…
A sheepish grin spread to his lips as he stood. “I will return at once. I came in to locate a padd and I must have dozed off by accident. We have all been putting in the hours this week preparing for our next mission and resupplying…”
“Cut the bullshit lieutenant. You are confined to quarters for the next three days when you are not on duty and you can pull some extra shifts since you will have additional free time. I don’t know who your former superiors were, but I don’t tolerate slackers. Hotshot pilot or not, you are going to clean yourself up and report for duty at once is that understood?”
“Should I report for duty first and then clean up or vice versa”, Athalla bluntly asked.
“Wise guy. You just bought yourself seven days of confinement. Want to try for the brig lieutenant?”
“No sir.”
“Then I suggest you learn to keep that mouth of yours shut. Now get out of my sight before I decide to have you marinate in a brig cell for the next two weeks!”
Athalla saluted and made his way out of the pilot’s lounge.
He despised that man. Lt. Commander Hughes had transferred aboard on Vulcan as interim deck officer. He was in charge of maintaining the shuttlebay, shuttles, fighters, and to a degree the pilots. Starfleet had made some suggestions to Captain Rehu for their current mission and Hughes was one of those suggestions. Athalla hoped the man was temporary or else it was very likely there would be a brilliant display of fireworks in the very near future.
Sometime Later…
“Have we checked the manifests for those torpedoes”, Athalla muttered glancing at a padd surrounded by various deck crews. The small number of fighters the Charon kept aboard were being prepped for combat given the deteriorating situation with the Romulan Empire. Why he, a pilot, had been put in charge of routine maintenance was beyond him. He blamed Hughes. The man had had it out for him since his boots had touched the Charon’s decks. One week out of spacedock and he already wanted to kill the man.
“No. I thought you had checked them sir?”
Athalla rubbed his head. “So we are in the process of loading dangerous weapons onto spacecraft and no one knows where the paperwork is? Any approvals? Manifests? Heaven forbid we actually have an inventory sheet! Do I have to do everything myself”, Athalla snapped. “Not to mention the half dozen safety protocols that were just broken.”
“HEY YOU”, Leon shouted at a deck team working to load a rack of torpedoes into one of the fighters. “Stop touching those torpedoes! For all we know they could be filled with paint. Everyone take five while I go sort out the paperwork issues in flight control.”
Leon shoved his padd under his arm and stormed off toward the flight operations booth. “What are we paying these people for”, he muttered under his breath as he stormed across the newly repaired shuttlebay deck. His anger had subsided some as he reached the booth to review computer records. It wasn’t exactly their fault. There were a lot of new faces on the flight deck since they had left Vulcan. It would take some time for them to regain team cohesion. Still he hoped they figured it out soon before they drove him insane with these silly, clerical distractions.
He sighed as he ran through cargo manifests looking for authorization paperwork and inventory files. Athalla had been born to fly. Performing administrative tasks and overseeing maintenance activities was not in his DNA. He wanted to be out there among the stars, not cooped up searching for misfiled paperwork.
Athalla suddenly grabbed his forehead as a wave of dizziness washed over him. It passed as quickly as it had arrived. Perhaps he had been working or even drinking a touch too much the past few days. He really needed to call it quits at four beers instead of eight.
Another wave of nausea and dizziness hit him causing the lieutenant to grab the console before him for support. It was more intense this time. He had no time to think about it when a shrill, recognizable voice stabbed him from behind.
“LIEUTENANT!” “LIEUTENANT, you were scheduled for maintenance duty at 0700 in the main shuttlebay!”
Athalla turned to see Commander Hughes glaring at him for a second time today. How had the man gotten up here so quietly?
“Seriously Commander? We already had this conversation two hours ago? What is it NOW sir?
“Lieutenant it is 0930!”
“Excuse me, but it is 1321 hours sir. Perhaps you should…” Athalla stopped for a moment sensing something wasn’t quite right. He felt oddly dizzy again.
“Cut the bullshit lieutenant. You are confined to quarters for the next three days when you are not on duty and you can pull some extra shifts since you will have additional free time. I don’t know who your former superiors were, but I don’t tolerate slackers. Hotshot pilot or not, you are going to clean yourself up and report for duty at once is that understood?”
Was this déjà vu? They were having the exact same conversation. “Sir, is this some sort of joke? I like a good prank as much as the next guy but…”
“Wise guy. You just bought yourself seven days of confinement. Want to try for the brig lieutenant?”
Athalla said nothing.
“Then I suggest you learn to keep that mouth of yours shut. Now get out of my sight before I decide to have you marinate in a brig cell for the next two weeks!”
“Sir…perhaps..” Suddenly, Commander Hughes disappeared before Athalla leaving the pilot alone in the flight control booth stunned and confused.
“What the hell?!”
The floor gently shook beneath his boots and then stopped. Another wave of turbulence shook the deck this time with severe force causing the lieutenant to grab a nearby console for support. Alarm klaxons rang out across the deck and shuttlebay. His computer displays cleared and were replaced with condition red warning animations signaling the move to red alert.
“So much for inventory review”, the pilot muttered as another powerful burst of turbulence shook the ship. What the hell was happening? Why was there no word from the bridge? Were they under attack? And what of his ghostly encounter with Commander Hughes? Even if it had been a hologram – someone would have had to put in a significant amount of time to pull off such a recreation and it wasn’t even that funny so why bother?
Again he felt sick. What was happening to him? Were these sensations a result of the alert? He stumbled out of the control booth as the ship was rocked again by forces unknown. Athalla barely caught the railing preventing him from being thrown over its edge to the bay floor far below. He managed to make the lift and slowly lowered himself down as the ship seemed to hit frequent pockets of severe turbulence. It felt as if the ship’s internal dampening systems were out of alignment or malfunctioning which would account for his reoccurring bouts of vertigo. It wasn’t often the floor or walls spun for a veteran pilot like himself.
Reaching the shuttle deck, Athalla quickly made his way back to the fighters only to feel the deck beneath him seemingly disappear. The lights suddenly failed and darkness swallowed everything in view. Severe turbulence knocked the pilot to the floor as horrific g-forces clawed at everything on the deck that was not bolted down. He couldn’t see it, but the air suddenly became a jumble of bodies, tools, machinery, computers, and equipment which eventually came crashing down everywhere across the flight deck.
Athalla tried to regain his footing despite the terrible shaking and engine noise that sounded as if it would tear the Charon apart. Suddenly something hit Athalla in the chest with brutal force knocking the air from his lungs. As he struggled for breath something large and heavy slammed into the lieutenant’s back. Consciousness left the lieutenant leaving him motionless somewhere in the vast darkness of a chaotic flight deck.
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Lt. Leon Athalla
Combat Pilot, USS Charon
