The Watch

The Watch

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Dark empty space and an incredibly luminous spiral of gases.  This was the scape before which Noomi stood. Pondering the vastness of a universe filled with untold wonders. How could you not when faced with such vistas as the one up on the forward viewscreen.  It was lonely and dwarfing which Noomi found to be quite romantic. Thats what she felt as she saw it all. Immensity. As Noomi watch it she also felt a sense of pride.

Noomi currently held the watch on the IGP, Intergalactic Patrol Intersystem Destroyer Ithaca. The illustrious "Ithaca", already legend in IGP annals. And Noomi was holding command. Her! It was exhilarating.  Noomi was sitting in the famous Captain Blackshaw's chair. Thee Captain Blackshaw, stuff of legends. The merchant of peace to Thanis Cati. The one who single handedly broke up the Amorynatu Slave ring by going undercover in it!  The breaker of the Hancor pirate band.  

And here Noomi sat, in THAT chair while the Captain slept.  Noomi, a rookie cadet out of IGP academy.  She couldn't believe she was only a year out of the academy.  Now newly promoted to 2nd Lieutenant and entrusted to hold a command watch on the ship while Blackshaw slept.  

Noomi admitted that her hero worship had distorted reality for her a bit. But the actual reality of IGP work was strong and rather hard. But interesting. IGP duty as it turned out had been grueling and eye opening. There was never enough presence, never enough people to cover, protect, and patrol the vast reaches of galactic civilization. Actually a mix of them.

IGP Captains were given a lot of autonomy and sadly not enough resources to cover their assigned areas.  The aftermath of the 1st galactic war had ravaged the militaries of the major powers. Lawlessness was an almost unknown predicament to the ordered peace minded old cultures of yore. That was, until it wasn't and the galaxy fell to anarchy.  It was in the aftermath of this war that a strange backwater race came to the fore. Humans and a group of other small minor polities stepped in, where lifted up, to help bring order to a galaxy. In a short time as the galaxy knew it, Humans had made quite a name for themselves in the galaxy as a force for order. A new legend.

A lot of it was boring though, cut with moments of pure terror and wonder.  A lot of customs work, relaying, and help with request. Some SAR work. Only a few battles thankfully.  There was a surprisingly massive amount of paper work and Noomi grimaced. Even more so of diplomacy.  She'd not realized how much till Captain Blackshaw had negotiated resupply deals from the Shangoitls, of the Shangois system they were currently stationed in.  The Captain had done some piecemeal work for the impoverished and relatively lowtech starsystem’s native inhabitants. They ran off some pirates, did some haul work, actual gravwell to orbit scut work.  But the Shangoitls loved the IGP now, well at least the Ithaca.  Many tips and other info had come their way. They had even given the Ithaca free resupply from their meager stores and access to their fledgling space infrastructure. They were where earth was around 2075 when the bad times had swept the galaxy and finally reached Earth system. Earth hadn't gotten anything like this "help." Earth had gotten a neural collar around the neck and a whip to the back.

Andalla, among others of the crew, had told Noomi about some of the times they'd had to deal with bad neighborhoods and hostile neighbors.  Horror stories. The ship had been at lower than 1/2 rations at one point to complete their mission. It was that threadbare sometimes.  

This was so far the opposite of those times. Shangois was now a quiet system and well placed to cover 4 nearby settled systems.  This ship was on the edge of the spear of IGP space, but no trouble yet, not since Noomi and the rest had arrived.

"How does it look Ensign Felders?" Noomi said to the tactical officer of the watch. A young rookie combat ops specialist. One just in the infancy of training, relatively. Noomi had been assigned to help the kid out as a mentor, as  young officers were expected.  He’d been a bit too green and it made her remember fondly her own first days aboard.  Noomi had feared at first, because of all her mistakes but Capt. Blackshaw's crew didn't even blink. They’d built her up (and wore her out) until she had become a decent officer.  No hazing here, like she had imagined might happen. This period of time had been one of the most exhilarating and exhausting of her life. Noomi was a Scientist specialist, with a PHD in planetary mechanics and stellar cartography.  It didn't matter as she had received a lot of cross training. A lot. So when Felders was placed under her she took it to heart to pass on the love she had been shown. While the Lt Commander handled Felder’s formal tact training, Noomi instilled in the boy Navy basic.

The cross training was particularly enlightening IGP tool. Noomi was a Scientist and thought that was it, but she had found she had a hand for navigation and the practical application of her stellar cartography. She was thinking of going into the navigation route. It had surprised Noomi that Captain Blackshaw had no formal education whatever,, had grown up in public basic ed and went right into the service. Unheard of these days.  It hadn't stopped Blackshaw from becoming one of the most decorated IGP Captains in its short history. This was an inspiration.

Felders looked back at Noomi and smiled, “Sar it does not look too bad out there.” Noomi nodded at this.  “I managed to complete 2 of the 4 tactical drills the LC gave me.  Two were really tough though.”

“All hands lost?” Noomi said in a comforting but wily voice. “Yes Sar,” replied the defeated Ensign. “Ha! Lieutenant Commander Gersande is quite the gamer. be careful of tricks within tricks.”  “Yes Sar,” he said a bit brighter.  

Then Noomi’s voice was cool and hard, firm but not harsh. Crisp. It was command voice.  “Felders give us a quick weapons check. Bring them up to ready state 2, charged state and ready to fire but not armed.  Then do a check and bring them back down.”

“Yes Sar!” Felders responded. It didn't even dazzle Noomi anymore to have control over weapons so powerful, well not much.

“Ensign Colby, How does it look in your sphere?” Noomi said asking her officer currently handling the Comms station.

“No problem Sar, I am expecting to do the local dl of system traffic once planetary sats gets back in our arc. Should be about an hour. No anomalies, just picked up some local trader traffic.”

Noomi nodded a thank you.  Since their arrival in this sector of space, trade had picked up quite a bit, nearly doubled in fact. It was telling that that was something Captain Blackshaw showed pride in, rather than military accomplishments.  It wasn't much to a 75 billion population, like say Urasnor System, but out here a few more extra vessels was a godsend.

“Lieutenant Jane?” Noomi asked of the other Lieutenant on deck.  Jane had the station Noomi usually operated on regular duty. The ship’s sensors.  

“Nothing on sensors, its pretty quiet Sar.” said Jane. Noomi outranked him only by a few months.

Usually the XO, Executive Officer Presit handled this watch. But lately they’d been giving it too Noomi more and more. The XO was up, but probably down in engineering. As he was like to be.

A weird garble came through the speakers on deck. “What was that?” Noomi asked.

“Sar,” said Lieutenant Jane in an odd voice. “I spoke too soon. I got something” Just then another sound chimed and Lieutenant Jane threw the data over to Noomi’s console.  “Two, no three translight jump signatures. They just now hit us. So that puts them at entering normal space about 5 mins  ago.”

“Goodwork,”Noomi absently replied. This was weird. It put them on the outer system. Trade Ships usually dropped into the inner planets. “Any communications?” she asked and Noomi’s voice was going hard.

“No Sar,” said Colby.

“Sar based off of these signatures, I have no match in my DB for them.” said Lieutenant Jane puzzled. “But signature reports are not a match for anything the size of trade vessels either. Not even the big Corp jobs. The splashes were too powerful.”

This immediately worred Noomi. It could be anything... or it could be trouble. “Are we active?” Noomi asked, her mind sparking. “No.” “Good keep us that way. Felders where are you with the checks?”  

Felder’s looked a little worried but did a good job of hiding it in his voice. “Uh, I was just going to bring them back down.  But I guess now we leave them at R2?”

“You would be correct Felders.” said Noomi. “Nav plot a good shadow intercept, sleek warp approach,” Noomi said, recalling similar orders in training. “I will alert the XO.” And Noomi was feeling a bit of pressure at having this in the real and not in simulation. But it was weird there was pressure but it didn’t panic her. She felt her pulse steady. She shook her head and gave orders “Bring the ship up to yellow status.”

---

It was a long few minutes before the doors to the bridge opened. But Noomi let out a sigh of relief when it did. She hadn’t known she was holding it. But instead of the XO there stood the Captain. All composed warrior. 6 foot 7 inches tall of toweringly strong presence. Though it was more than just physical stature. You could see the prominent scars crossing the Woman’s dark skinned face. Remnants of her time in slavery. And despite the hour Captain Blackshaw looked not at all disheveled.  “Report Lieutenant. Xu.” she said, asking of Noomi. And Noomi filled her in as fast as she could. Captain Blackshaw nodded at the nicely compact precis. “Good work Xu,” said the surprisingly light voice of that strong presence. And Noomi felt her cheeks flush.  She felt it more deeply as she vacated the Captains chair to resume her usual station receiving a quick salute from the Captain. As Noomi surrendered the watch, the rest of main shift officers came in.  3rd shift all went to their usual stations or left the bridge.

Captain Blackshaw spun her chair around in a clockwise rotation as was her tick.  “Nav?”

The Navigations officer responded, “My assistant, our ensign, managed a decent course I think. It looks optimal.” And that Ensign at his sub console for navigations beamed through his worry.

“Okay then” said the steady light voice of the Captain. “Charge translight drives. Have warp field drives ready too, I want to keep our signature as low as possible though. I want us ready for a microjump. Who ever just popped in won’t be ready to jump again until they spool down their jump engines down and then back up.”

“Thinking of trouble Captain?” came the XO over the com at secondary bridge.  “Not sure yet. You say one ship had diff power sigs from the others?”  

“Yes” said Noomi from sensors.

“Could be anything true, but to be safe…” and the Captain shrugged leaning back into the Captain’s chair.  “All right Nav take us to warp state 4.”

And Noomi eyes on her secondary screens of electronic interstitial space watched as the Destroyer shifted into warp and moved to acceleration

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Wrote this little quickie for  http://www.misfortunecookie.ca/blogs/neverending-story-project/ Haven't submitted this one yet. It might be too long.

I have another IGP tale I am working on. Not sure if I want to finish this one. Though in the short time I really grew to like Noomi, and Andrea Blackshaw.

Thanks for your time.

terror.and.love@gmail.com