USS Vincennes, First Officer's Personal Log Entries

Holodeck Short Stories
1
Stardate:
99342.2
Filed By:
CMDR Bastion, Kelly
Clearance:

USS VINCENNES, EXECUTIVE OFFICER’S PERSONAL LOG

First Officer’s log, stardate 99342.2.

I've not really left a proper log entry lately, have I?

We’re back at home base. Repairs are underway. The injured are healing. But, the Betreka Nebula continues to haunt me.

Our mission? Locate and retrieve starship Prometheus, in the company of a veritable fleet of starships.

The outcome? Vincennes was crippled and put out-of-action for at least three weeks, the Captain put out-of-action for at least the same, and I got my first real taste of solitary command.

Is it really a ‘command’ if the ship can’t move and the crew is sorely demoralised?

That’s probably one for the philosophers to handle.

Doctor Kahuk tells me that Captain Meadows should regain consciousness any moment now. He’s been saying that for two days now. But it’s a testament to him and his team that she’s alive at all, really, much less about to wake up. I was on the other side of the bridge when it happened, by the helm station, but what I saw was quite gruesome. We were all flung about in the unexpected explosion, of course, but the captain was standing by the aft science station analysing some probe data when that console exploded. She took a full-frontal shower of debris, was flung over the centre railing, then a chunk of support structure fell on her torso after she landed. We were all bumped and bruised in that explosion, but the Captain took the brunt of it.

I was certain she was dead when I reached her.

The Doc says she took shrapnel through both kidneys and her liver, suffered a collapsed lung and broken ribs, and endured severe head injuries, which were compounded by restricted blood-flow in the immediate aftermath. He expects her to make a full recovery now that she’s out of surgery, but it was touch-and-go for a while there.

The Captain would, of course, be proud of Vincennes and her crew. The ‘Queen V’ nickname for this vessel predates my own arrival as it does hers - and, frankly, most officers on this ship - but I finally understand it now. Vincennes not only survived yet another attempt on her life, but she managed to limp out of that damned nebula and pull her crew out of danger despite catastrophic damage, that would assuredly have completely crippled any other vessel. I’m not superstitious, but… at some point you have to wonder, is the ship itself looking out for you?

Do these starships, upon which we depend for life, actually start to take on a character of their own? The Captain would say yes, but I had my doubts until this week.

Meanwhile, everybody aboard - even officers and enlisted personnel without engineering or medical qualifications - pulled together to help the damage control and emergency medical teams wherever they could. I would like it to be formally noted that USS Vincennes suffered ZERO fatal casualties during our recent incident, and that is wholly as a result of the skill, dedication, and comradery of her exceptional crew.

I’ll be recommending a large number of commendations in my final report to Command.

But now, we’re just… sitting here. Waiting for the old girl to hum back to life. Waiting for our captain to wake up.

Waiting.

It’s a little eerie, to be honest. I’m getting PADDs handed to me, but they’re all just… reports. Nothing I can action. I feel a little paralysed.

Anyway. Now that Vincennes is in DS13’s care, I’m ordering rotating shifts of shore leave for our entire crew aboard the station. They won’t want to go, but that’s the beauty of orders - they won’t have a choice!

Personally, I’m studying the logs of the initial briefing of our aborted rescue mission.

Something about it doesn’t sit right with me.

//SIGNED//
Commander Kelly Bastion,
First Officer,
USS Vincennes

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2
Stardate:
99374.6
Filed By:
CMDR Bastion, Kelly
Clearance:

USS VINCENNES, EXECUTIVE OFFICER’S PERSONAL LOG

First Officer’s personal log, stardate 99374.6.

Vincennes has been laid-up in Deep Space 13’s drydock for a couple of weeks now. I am slowly growing accustomed to my new role as a human ‘rubber stamp’, but repairs are continuing at-pace. I’ve nothing but praise for DS13’s repair teams - they are methodical, professional, and do excellent work. Pretty soon, you won’t be able to tell anything happened to the ship at all. My guess, based on the progress so far, is maybe a week or so before we’re back up to full strength, but we’re yet to receive a definitive deadline from DS13’s crews.

Will my sanity last that long, however? That remains to be seen - it faces an assault from two fronts.

The first is Lieutenant Commander Byrta Fodd.

I adore Chief Fodd, both as a colleague and as a friend. She is a dedicated, kind, and energetic person, a principled and devoted Starfleet officer, and a fantastic leader for our engineering team. We have served on Vincennes since we were both ensigns, and we have a fantastic rapport. She is easily one of the best engineers in the fleet, and Vincennes is lucky to have her.

Which is why I was dreading this repair cycle, because I remember how she was during Vincennes’ 20-year refit. She is relentless. It’s a quality that serves her well while we’re out there in the void, but if you shut Vincennes down and allow repair teams from another facility aboard to work on the ship, then she becomes a completely different person.

Did Commander Fodd obey the shore leave order I gave when we entered drydock? Technically, yes. She has not been ‘on-duty’ in any formal capacity since we docked. Has she actually left the ship? No. Is she surreptitiously following Deep Space 13’s repair crews around and critiquing their work, then complaining about it to me? Yes.

One message she sent to me today included “the gravity plating in section 14 deck 37 sounds different now”. I have had 16 such messages just this week, and today is Wednesday.

Meanwhile, I am led to believe that she has been following DS13’s repair crews around the ship in a manner that she believes to be covert, but which clearly is not covert, partly because I am mentioning it in this log. I am hopeful that I don’t receive complaints from @DS13.Engineering about her in return, but I suspect they’re used to chief engineers being particular about their ships. We shall see.

Chief Fodd is only one front in the war on my sanity, however. Captain Meadows is the other.

Again, for the record, I adore the captain too. I’ve great respect for her leadership, and we get along very well. But much like Chief Fodd, she does not respond well to inaction, particularly when it is her that is out-of-action - never mind when her ship is out-of-action at the same time.

Unlike Bytra, Rebecca did indeed leave the ship as as soon as she was discharged from sickbay, although that was ordered by Dr Kahuk, and something was mentioned about a bat’leth contest if she didn’t do so (I didn’t dare pry into that). By all accounts, the captain is making a strong recovery, particularly considering the extent of her injuries. She did say something to me about a Jem’Hadar spying on her in a bar at one point not long after she left the ship, but that may have just been a residual side-effect from her head injuries.

But while Dr Kahuk forbade her from getting involved in Vincennes’ repairs, from attending any meetings, or doing essentially anything but reading reports that I send to her, what he neglected to do was to cut her off from asking me questions. And she has taken advantage of that loophole to stay in the loop as best she can.

My PADD pings roughly once an hour, every hour, during all 16 VSD hours. If I send her a report, it pings roughly once every twenty seconds for five minutes afterwards. There’s an old Earth joke about children travelling from Earth to Mars on a shuttlecraft and asking if “we’re nearly there yet” repeatedly, and this reminds me of that. When two Cardassian warships arrived at the station a few days ago, I received from her no less than 15 different questions about it, but I couldn’t give her any answers besides “yes Captain, there are Cardassian warships here”. When some of DS13’s repair crews took a worker bee out to the port nacelle yesterday, I received five questions about it.

I would usually air all of these concerns with the captain, of course. Right now, that would be inappropriate.

If Vincennes isn’t repaired soon, I might need medical leave myself.

//SIGNED//
Commander Kelly Bastion,
First Officer,
USS Vincennes

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3
Stardate:
99432.5
Filed By:
CMDR Bastion, Kelly
Clearance:

USS VINCENNES, EXECUTIVE OFFICER’S PERSONAL LOG

First Officer’s personal log, stardate 99432.5.

The majority of Vincennes’ staff have now been on-boarded again. It appears that over a month of shore leave is too much for even the most exhausted of personnel. I’m now dealing with nearly a thousand active personnel, all experts in their fields, who are - essentially - bored. There is not a single department head who has not contacted me over the last 24 hours for an update on the ship’s progress.

Commander Fodd tells me that Vincennes is now in better shape than she was after her last 20-year refit - which is a frankly astonishing statement, given her initial report after we left Earth Spacedock - and she is now insisting that valuable Starfleet resources are being wasted by keeping Vincennes in drydock. This is, for the record, the first time I have ever heard Commander Fodd express that too much engineering work has taken place aboard this ship.

That would’ve been enough of a surprise on its own, but an hour ago Doctor Kahuk approached me to say that he was wrong in his initial assessment, and that he is going to approve Captain Meadows for a return to active duty, despite his initial ultimatum that her recovery time should match the ship’s repair schedule. I don’t think he’s told her yet - my PADD hasn’t exploded. I don’t think I’ve ever heard him say that he was ‘wrong’ before, either.

I’ve contacted DS13’s engineers for an update, but none has been forthcoming. I worry that when the Captain returns, she may order that we simply break the umbilicals and leave without authorisation. I don’t imagine that Commander Fodd will try to talk her out of doing so, either.

In either case, at least I’ll have some support. This has been… unpleasant.

//SIGNED//
Commander Kelly Bastion,
First Officer,
USS Vincennes

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