Road to Pennsylvania

Posted on Thu Sep 2nd, 2021 @ 12:01pm by Lieutenant JG Camille Lévesque PhD

Mission: Season Two - Incidentals
Location: Shuttlecraft Logan
Timeline: Current

The hold of the shuttlecraft Logan, outbound from Iota Station, was cramped.

Three replacement crew for the USS Pennsylvania, including the new Chief Science Officer, were sharing the tight space for the eighty-hour journey. It was manageable only by the fact that all three passengers, plus the pilot who took his breaks in the aft hold while one of the three relieved him at the helm, all understood the importance of being gracious and kind. It would only take one selfish jerk to ruin it for everyone, and thankfully none of them wanted that to be them.

Camille Lévesque had been in the Delta Quadrant of her own volition when the graviton catapults went down almost six months earlier. She had gotten approval to go on a Delta Quadrant field expedition, using the excursion craft the Institute had made available to her when she signed on three years earlier. A survey ship had sent back readings of some ruins, complete with mummified remains, consistent with a culture that she had come across years earlier, during her time aboard the Victory.

How was she to know that the catapults would become inoperable?

So she and her small team were trapped in Delta until the infrastructure necessary to bring them home was repaired. They completed their archaeological dig, spending an extra few weeks planetside, being as comprehensive as they could be, but then, what to do? They sheltered at Iota Station, hoping the repairs would be completed imminently. They weren’t.

Camille decided to sign over control of their excursion craft to her second-in-command, and then reactivated her commission. She was sure that she could contribute positively to Starfleet operations in the area. Surely a ship needed a Chief Science Officer.

The USS Pennsylvania needed a Chief Science Officer.

It also needed a new damage control specialist and a new security officer, replacing two crew who had become injured and had to cycle back to Iota not long earlier. So the three Starfleet crewmembers shared the aft compartment of the shuttlecraft Logan, which was en route to Ketram.

“Lieutenant Lévesque?” called the pilot from the forward compartment. “Message from the Pennsylvania, with rendezvous instructions.

He put the text of the message on a screen. She adjusted the glasses on her face and read them before turning to the rest of the passengers.

“Okay,” she began. “We’re going to reach Ketram a little over an hour before the Pennsylvania. Shuttle will land on the planet and the three of us will disembark. We can explore Ketram — together, never alone — and meet up with the ship’s own landing parties. The pilot will stay grounded until we are in Starfleet hands. D’accord?”

“Yes, ma’am,” said her two companions.

“In the meantime,” she continued, “I’d like to rest a bit. I suggest everyone do the same, pilot included at some point. We’ll all be busy when we reach Ketram, and I’d like us to be at our best.”

The two new crewmen offered to watch the helm while Camille and the pilot napped for a couple hours, understanding that they would switch off for the final hours before landing. Her eyes closed in the darkened shuttle hold, the scientist tried to drift off to sleep, to dream of the adventure that awaited her.

=/\=

Lieutenant jg Camille Lévesque, PhD
Incoming Chief Science Officer
USS Pennsylvania