Crashing

Posted on Sun Mar 20th, 2022 @ 11:21pm by Ensign Noah Balsam & Lieutenant Irynya

Mission: Sojourners of Time
Location: Holodeck
Timeline: Mission Day 3 at 2130

[Holodeck]
[Day 3]
[Hour 2130 ]

"Proximity Alert. Collision imminent. Adjust course now." The computer's voice was way, way too calm as it repeatedly pinged out an increasingly irate sound. "Gravitational sheer stress on port nacelle at 140% above design limit. Redirecting structural integrity field reserves."

"No, I-I need that-!" Protested a panicky voice. Hard and fast taps at the aft control cross were to little avail.

"Proximity Alert. Collision imminent. Adjust course now." The lighting in the shuttle's small cockpit shifted from jaundiced amber to scarlet red. "Impact in five seconds." The keyboard of the Flight Control console squealed and squelched as thinking mathematically gave way to panic.

"That- no no no! That way! Turn! N-!" A series of explosions and glittered dissolved the shuttle. Lanky Noah Balsam squeaked as again he landed hard on his tailbone as the seat he'd been sitting in dissolved under him. "Fuck!" The last thing he'd seen was one of the long, spindly shaft decks to Jupiter Station's fusion core grew ever larger in his star view. But at least he didn't end up in Jupiter's upper atmosphere this time.

Noah sighed heavily, lolling his head around and then tilting his head back. His dark, curly hair hung down with gravity, his beakish nose pointed up at the Holodeck's ceiling. "Computer," he said with eyes closed. His brows jerked up with accepted defeat. "Reset." His skinny chest sunk, his back bowing to the deckplates before he grunted and pushed himself up.

"Specify program." The Computer sounded almost testy.

"Jupiter Station approach from Io Subspace Repeater Station 11, impulse shuttle." Noah mumbled flatly. He rubbed his sore tailbone.

"That bruise is the worst," a feminine voice called. The sort swish of doors announced the arrival of a newcomer who leaned against the arch just I side the holodeck. "Collision or explosion?"

Irynya pushed off the wall, walking toward her stick-bug of a roommate, her own tailbone reminding her of the aches she'd earned over time from simulations like this.

Noah looked over his shoulder and flushed. He looked like he wanted to mutter. It had been a hard forty-eight hours what with a roommate change and settling in to the new reality that a person who very much had some say in his destiny also saw him as a non-person. As glad as he was to see Irynya this felt like just exposing her to just.... how over-focused he'd been as an Engineer. To the detriment of some basic skills as a Cadet.

"Uhh... collision..." he leaned on the holographic console and rocked his foot on its ball, "No, two collisions.... crushed by Jupiter... another collision... um... collision and took out a sensoryy array panel...." He sighed and looked back at her, "So far," he added. "I haven't e-even tried the Uranus Approach or the Titan Run." He sat down, his long limbs bending as he slouched. He rubbed an eye-crust from the corner of his socket.

"Oh ri-right and I over-compensated on thrusters about and destroyed a whole subspace repeater array. S-so no one in Jovian space would be getting the Velocity Championship results from Earth that day." Despite his failure and fatigue, he smiled.

Irynya reached the center of the room as Noah's smile lit his face. She nodded, offering him an understanding smile before speaking to the air around her.

"Computer, cancel Jupiter Station request." The Risian waited until the acknowledgment of cancellation. "Display Shuttlepod Type 15 transit midway from Earth to Risa."

"Working," the computer intoned as a shuttle similar to the ones found in the Sojourner's shuttlebay materialized around them.

The Risian gestures to the pilot's seat, taking the co-pilot for herself. "Ok, ace," she said with a wink, "show me what you feel comfortable doing."

Noah's smile was begrudging. Then it turned almost sarcastic, not something he was overly known for. He sat down and tucked his hair behind the shell of one ear. "Done." His dark eyes shifted at the joke to the controls and back, "Di-did I pass?"

Irynya's eyebrow arched and she smirked knowingly at the cadet. "With flying colors," she said with amusement before expression turned a bit more focused and her tone shifted to something gentle and encouraging. "Now, basics. You know which controls are which?"

Noah pivoted the chair with hydraulic, almost hovering on a cushion ease with a deft push of his shoe. "Pitch... s-so positive and negative Z-axis," he pointed at the controls aglow in white and blue-gray. "Yaw," he point and hovered a finger over the controls that moved the ship in a 360-degree circle of direction. "Axial Roll," he said, pointing at another three-sixty control but this one rotated the ship along its long axis. "Course coordinates set," he pointed at numbers in the foreground of a circle in one and a half-circle in the other. "0 to one-90 for z-climb, 359 to 270 for z-descend." He pointed more intently at the full circle, "Bearing degrees."

Noah dropped his hands and chewed his lip, "Impulse control, port and starboard." he indicated. "Manifold control for um, quarter, half, full, maximum... and stuh-stuff." Again he dropped his hand down under the console and leaned almost expectantly toward it, "Warp field geometry control... warp field status.... set warp factor.... long-range navigational sensor array." He pointed at each in turn. Then he shifted to a cross, "Port Thrusters...." he pointed at the middle cross, "Station keeping.... port, starboard, aft and fore.." He turned attention to his other hand, "Starboard thrusters, same thing...."

The Risian pilot nodded as she listened, waiting until he finished. "Impulse Manifold control..." she began, pointing as she did, "quarter, half, full, maximum..." Her finger hovered over the last setting as she looked expectantly at Noah.

Noah leaned towards her finger and then eyed up her arm to her eye, "Close?" He said of the setting he'd skipped with his short-hand of "stuff."

She looked at him, trying to gauge if he was guessing or merely uncertain of his answer. "Full stop," she said back to him. "Close is essentially correct for how it functions, but the setting is full stop. Tell me again," she insisted.

Noah hunched some, "Ok," he pointed at each, "Full stop, quarter, half, full, maximum." He indicated a linear control adjacent, "Forward or reverse. And-and again... station-keeping. Neutral." He grinned a little goofily. Then he moved to another set. He tapped the white of the LCARS swoops, "Open moorings.... clear moorings. Dock latch selector for um.... Federation..." he swiped right, "Klingon.... Bajoran.... Cardassian... Ferengi.... and Basic-Universal." Then a last point, "And ba-basically the parking brake."

"Good," the Risian commented with an encouraging grin. "Ok, we're in the middle of nowhere. You can't crash into anything right here," she began. "Take me through the motions for the Jupiter Station approach. Slowly."

Noah's eyes jerked to the stars and back, his hands folding their fingers in their lap. "Ummmm...." he said long. "From-from io Repeater or just from the Jupiter Station Or-orbital Perimeter?"

"Let's start with orbital perimeter," she replied calmly. "You know the science. So tell the shuttle what gravitational influences to compensate for. What factors do you need to account for?"

Noah again hunched over the controls and locked his fingers. "Orbital velocity of Jupiter Station, Rotation of Jupiter Station, approach vector... ummm..." He squinted an eye, "Gravitational affect of Jupiter, gravitational effect of Ganymede, gravitational effect of Io... depending on the time, gravitational parallax of Metis and Io.." He pushed breath out into his bangs and again, Noah looked at the stars. "Magnetospheric and ion distortion fields from Io-Jupiter interaction..." His eyes widened, "Oh," he straightened, "And inbound-outbound traffic patterns."

Irynya grinned. "Good. Now take us through it," she said, eyes darting to the field of stars in front of them before turning back to Noah. She reached across the space between them and set her hand on his forearm. "You've got this."

Noah frowned some, self-doubting. "OK. Well we-we have the bow pointed to Risa... so to Sol system that's um..." His fingers moved at the maps, swiping and tapping. "192 mark um... 031." His fingers shifted the bearing and he adjusted the shuttle's positive pitch to bring them in "straight." "Warp factor?" He asked over his shoulder. "I-Imean its just a shuttle... we can't do more than four."

Irynya fixed the curly-headed cadet with a look. "You know this Noah. In order to make the turn into orbit what warp factor is best. Science. Tell me the science."

Noah's eyes dropped down to the space between them. His feet planted only momentarily, he bounced his knee. "Nothing faster than warp two inside a populated star system," he repeated the book. "Buh-but impulse only when within half an Astronomical Unit of the target destination."

"Good," Irynya commented back. "So what's the answer to your question?"

He looked at their distance from Jupiter, "Well we aren't in the system yet...."

A small knowing smile settled on her features and her eyes gentled as the cadet stalled. "Noah," she said, voice pitched to soothe and coax, "look at me."

Noah looked at her.

She waited for a moment, letting the quiet reign until his gaze came to hers. "You know the science. Flying is all science. Propulsion and speed and gravity or lack thereof. Imagine you were programming a holo simulation. To make it realistic, what speed would you use?"

Noah's frustration bubbled up for a moment, with a harsh breath, a thin line to his mouth. "They're not the same," he said with an even protest. "S-science is knowledge. It's facts, proven and disproven. This is..." he flung a frustrated hand with a flick at the controls, "This is art. Ih-it doesn't matter what speed you head into a system, only what laws that system judges. For Sol it's warp 1.25. They r-recommend warp limit 1.25 for the Eris transit corridor. But probably just main impulse when coming through some of the other zones in the Kuiper Belt. And-and since Eris is pointed at Proxima Centauri right now for... at least another seventy-five years... and we're on the other side of the system, impulse."

He stood up and sighed, "I-I can set a course. That's not my problem." He paced away from the cockpit.

The Risian frowned, turning in her chair to face him as he moved. She fought the instinct to comfort, choosing instead to stay where she was. It was a small shuttle and he couldn't move more than a few meters away from the cockpit anyway. Just enough space to pace. Not enough space to escape.

With a sigh she leaned forward, resting her elbows on her knees and clasping her hands out in front of her. "Tell me the problem then," she said quietly, but firmly.

"I stutter," Noah said a long pause later, briefly done over his shoulder. "My brain moves too fast for my mouth. I can't k-keep up. It gets worse when I'm stressed. It gets worse when there's a lot going on around me that," he tapped his brain with contempt, "I can't control but I-I try to track anyway." Noah turned around. "It's the same. A lot of information coming in, I'm trying to compensate. And-and I over-compensate or under-compensate or try something different."

Irynya nodded slowly, considering. She pulled the inside of her cheek between her teeth, pursing her lips as she did. Finally, she looked up. "You're not training to be a pilot," she said, stating the obvious. "You just need to pass these tests. Do you know which paths the tests will take?"

Noah shook his head, "N-no not really. The test is set by the um, Proctor. I mean I can guess... setting coordinates, having control over the craft, docking maneuvers and-and probably some basic evasion action."

Irynya nodded again, a smile reforming on her lips. "Ok, so what you need... is muscle memory. Reaction instead of calculation."
She turned the warmth of her smile on the curl-haired midshipman. "Sit back down?"

Noah obeyed- stiffly. Putting his hand on the headrest he swiveled the chair around and dropped his slenderness into it. He sat uncomfortably in the chair, tense. "This is really embarrassing," Noah said after a moment, trying to break the tension. "Dih-did you know almost thirty percent of Engineers started off in Flight Control? Some of the best-known engineers in Starfleet started careers in red. Captain LaForge... Professor O'Brien..."

Irynya's eyebrows crept up, expression incredulous. "You're an honorary Risian. I've seen you naked. There is nothing here to be embarrassed about. It's me." The Risian held back a small giggle. "And who cares how many engineers started in flight control? As many cadets that graduate as pilots have also washed out before they got the chance. You don't need to be a pilot, Noah. You need to pass this course."

"I know," Noah closed his eyes, "I-I'm just frustrated that I can't do this very well, but I still have to if I want to stay in-in this uniform." When he opened them, he looked tired. "I-I think I'm going to stop for today. I've been trying a lot today." He nodded, "But-but yes I need to just keep training. I know. But it's not like computers and... software. That just makes sense in my head. Like breathing. This is if I ever had to do this, I could get someone killed."

"It's not that you need to keep training, Noah," Irynya said gently. "It's that the training you do needs to work for you. This," she gestured to the shuttle around them, "isn't working well for you."

She reaches across the space between them settling her hand on his forearm. "Do it one more time for me, but let me help this time?"

Noah put his arms around himself in a sort of loose hug, "Maybe," he said tentatively with a glance at the gunmetal and white swoops of the LCARS. "But I-I think I'm done today.." He nodded with tentative assertion, "I've crashed enough... or ended up in the metallic hydrogen layer of a gas giant."

Irynya withdrew her hand, giving space where it seemed it was wanted. "Ok," she said kindness and gentleness infusing her tone. "But the offer for help still stands. Whenever you want it."

To Be Continued...

A post by:

Lieutenant JG Irynya
Assistant Flight Control Chief

Midshipman Noah Balsam
Systems Specialist