Unorthodox Exercise

Posted on Mon Nov 16th, 2015 @ 5:17am by Lieutenant Commander Jean Reynard & Captain Tim Williams

Episode: Lost Property
Location: USS Highlander - Gym
Timeline: MD00 1600hrs

Jean was nervous. It was silly, really, to feel apprehensions at this late date. He'd had ample opportunity to leave Starfleet or choose a more sedate posting on a starbase inside the Federation interior. He'd had refresher training, too, and a long transport ride to prepare himself. There he was, though, jittery as an ensign on his first assignment. Was it nerves, excitement, or some mix? Even as he stepped out of the turbolift and looked for the captain, he wasn't sure.

"Can I help you, Lieutenant?" The beta shift bridge officer asked, as Jean stood in the doorway. The bridge operations were fairly quiet and orderly, with a lieutenant in command and various other officers of varying lower grades were manning the other stations.

"I'm Lieutenant Reynard. I just arrived aboard," Jean replied. "I was hoping to find the captain and report aboard."

"The captain's down on deck six in the gym I believe," the duty officer answered. "He's been there since shortly after alpha shift clocked off, so you'd probably best hurry if you still want to catch him there."

"Ah. Thanks," Jean said. He could have kicked himself for not checking on that beforehand. Back into the turbolift he went, headed down to deck six. He considered not interrupting the captain, but that lead to thoughts of chasing the man from point to point around the ship. Better to get it over with.

He reached the gym a minute later and looked around. Glancing around the room, he spotted the captain off to one side. He went over to join him.

"Captain Williams?" Jean said. "Sorry to interrupt, do you have a minute?"

"Yeah, sure," Tim said, not looking up from what he was doing as he responded. He was playing a game of ping pong with the opposing side of the table raised so that he was playing against himself, hitting the ball with a fairly good rhythm again and again. In a room otherwise filled with crewmen on running machines or lifting weights, the sound of his game seemed a bit out of place. He adjusted his last hit of the ball to send it bouncing off the back board at a higher angle so that he could catch it as it fell down towards him.

"What can I do for you?" he said, finally looking at Jean.

"I'm Lieutenant Reynard, your new ops officer," Jean said. Ping-pong was not exactly what he'd expected when told Tim was in the gym. Not that there was anything wrong with it, of course, it probably was excellent for coordination and reflex training, but it still seemed a little on the... eccentric side. "I just arrived a shuttle a bit ago, and I thought I'd check in with you asap."

"Ah, welcome aboard!" Tim said, reaching out to shake the lieutenant's hand. "Care to join me for a game?" he asked, motioning the table.

"Sure, why not," Jean said, shrugging and picking up a paddle.

"So, if I'm remembering correctly, your last ship was the Otunbayeva? That's one of those old Ambassador classes isn't it?" Tim asked, as he lowered the other half of the table so that they could use it for a regular game.

"That's right, sir," Jean said. He took one of the balls and bounced it on the table a few times to get a feel for how it moved. "One of the last built, actually, right before they switched the production lines over to the newer Galaxy-based classes."

"You know, I always liked those old ships. Don't get me wrong, I'll still get my hands into whatever new bit of tech Starfleet R&D churn out like a kid in a toy store, but those older ships were much more hands-on in the engineering department. Less pressing panels and more working components."

"Oh, yeah, there's definitely something to be said for that. Most parts these days are entirely solid-state, so your only option is complete replacement. You could actually fix the older versions and put them back in. Of course, after a few years of that, nothing quite worked how the manual said it should. Interesting professionally, sure, but an incredible pain the rear too."

"You're going to love the Highlander then," Tim said, as he started batting a ball across the table to start up a rally. "This ship has been my home for almost ten years. As an engineer, I can guarantee that almost no part of this ship looks the way it does in the manuals."

"Sounds like fun," Jean said, returning the ball, a little hesitantly at first but with increasing confidence. "At least as long as you're not the sort of person who thinks sticky notes are proper documentation."

"That usually tends to depend on whether I have enough space around my doodles on the sticky notes," Tim responded, putting a bit more force into a hit to get the ball bouncing a bit quicker. The repeated taps of the ball on the table were reverberating around the room a little now, and a few of the other crew members who had been exercising were stopping to watch the impromptu match. "It can gets a bit tough to draw technical diagrams on a page that is full of drawings of fire-breathing dragons." Tim was jesting of course; in truth he hadn't drawn on paper for many years; his attempts at dragons would likely turn out looking more like lame snakes with anger issues.

"I suppose I can work with doodles, as long as they're informative ones. Red dragons for heat problems, white dragons for coolant issues, blue for - ack!" The ball went sailing past the tip of Jean's paddle, and he nearly overbalanced while trying to get it. "Chatting and bouncing things simultaneously may not be my forte."

"Some are more informative than others," Tim smiled, pleased to have won the game as he placed his paddle down on the table top. "So long as you can chat and run systems at the same time, I think you'll do fine," he said. "Welcome aboard."

"Thank you, sir." Jean picked up the ball. "Best out of three?"