Receiving Guidance
Posted on Sun Jul 27th, 2014 @ 4:13pm by Captain Navala Cowell
Mission:
Temporal Integrity
Location: Captain’s Ready Room, USS Arizona
Timeline: Stardate 565319.1 (26 April, 2888)
“Captain Cowell,” the voice of Rear Admiral Dorin rang out from the communications terminal in Navala’s TCARS access panel, “I’m sorry I haven’t contacted you sooner, but I thought it best to give you a little time to collect your thoughts after what happened with your father.”
“I appreciated your concern, Admiral,” Navala said with a smile as she turned to regard the image of the Admiral head on, “What can I do for you?”
“With the commissioning of the Arizona, we finally have enough timeships to evenly distribute the workload of temporal incursions. Given your own familiarity with this particular period in time, we’ve decided to give you a chunk of the timeline between the twentieth and the twenty-fifth centuries as your main area of focus. Five thousand years shouldn’t be too much for you to handle your first time out as Captain,” the female Admiral smirked.
“I think we can handle it, Admiral. And the historian you’ve sent me should prove incredibly useful for correcting temporal incursions as well…” Navala mused. She hadn’t thought Starfleet would have had the good sense to send her someone with the unique characteristics that a Ramuran possessed.
“Luck of the draw, there, Captain. She almost got sent to the Meridian, if not for the current historian wishing to remain aboard for another tour you wouldn’t have lucked out so well. Oh, one more thing,” Adm. Dorin said after what seemed like a flash of inspiration, “We have finally come to a consensus regarding the recruitment of individuals from other timelines. Based on our incursion projections, we are now authorizing the recruitment of any individual who would have otherwise died as a natural course of their own timeline.”
“So… you’re saying that anyone from any part of my allotted timeline fragment who is about to be killed can be pulled from the timeline and used? Does that include helping to prevent incursions in their own timeline?” Navala inquired, her interest on the subject piqued.
“No, they would have to be used for time periods before their lifetime or in the case of some periods, after their deaths some years. We’ve run several incursion calculations and have settled on a thirty year window prior to birth and post death. Too few years between and we risk certain paradoxical phenomenon that we’d rather just not have to clean up. And while we’re on the subject, what is an acceptable temporal incursion factor?” the Admiral inquired suddenly.
“No higher than .0025 percent,” Navala regurgitated the regulation.
“Actually… no. New Temporal Integrity projections have concluded that anything below .005 percent is acceptable. We will be putting out the formal regulation shortly, however I thought it best to brief you personally since you are new to commanding a timeship,” Adm. Dorin smiled.
“I appreciate that, Admiral. Once the ship is fully staffed, I will be sure to put this new knowledge to good use. One more thing… As you know, I’m not the physician my father was,” Navala grinned somewhat sadly for a moment, “But I remember reading something about temporal psychosis…”
“Let me stop you right there. Your father devised a cure and preventative inoculation series for that condition thirty years ago. You will be given the initial series when your chief of medicine arrives. I would say the medical hologram could handle it but I’m sure your father would turn over in that torpedo tube if he knew you’d activated one of those things on his ship,” the Admiral couldn’t help but shake her head at the notion.
“Only if it didn’t look like him…” Navala said before stopping sort and asking, “It doesn’t look like him… does it?”
“No, absolutely not,” Adm. Dorin assured her, “We would never do something like that. I believe the medical hologram is patterned after the one equipped on the original Arizona. Though I do believe it was dormant on that ship…”
“You mean the Prometheus-class ship?” Capt. Cowell asked.
“Oh… I’d forgotten about that one… then no, the second one. I don’t believe the EMH was ever installed on the first Arizona…” the Admiral corrected herself.
“There was one, actually,” Navala said as she flexed her ‘muscle’ just a bit, “And Papa only used it once when they had run out of medical staff and needed support.”
“I see you are very much your father’s daughter, Captain. You have the same grin on your face talking about the ship as he did. You’ll make a fine Commanding Officer,” the Admiral remarked, “I look forward to reading of your exploits out there. Dorin out.”
When the screen finally went blank, Navala sank back into her chair. As many times as she had spoken to the Admiral over the years, she’d never gotten used to just how tense the whole ordeal felt. Even when Nathan was still wearing the uniform, and basically ruled any room he occupied regardless of who might actually be in charge at the time, Navala couldn’t see Admirals as regular people. The weight of their responsibilities seemed far more oppressive than any normal person might handle. Navala couldn’t help but wonder if a great deal of Nathan’s aged form when he was sick was a direct reflection of the stress he had soldiered on through for well over a thousand years...
