Resupply and Refit

Posted on Mon Feb 11th, 2013 @ 6:44pm by Captain Vorn Krace

Mission: Renewed Beginnings
Location: Proxima Maintenance Yards

Captain Krace stood in what had become his usual spot over the course of the last few days since returning from his shoreleave on Earth; in one of Proxima Maintenance Yards' observation decks, watching the work going on around his ship, the USS Iapetus.

They had returned from the Delta Quadrant via the newly-operable transwarp hub that the Federation had deployed to make use of the Borg's disused transwarp corridor in order to make a connection between the Alpha Quadrant and the area in the Delta Quadrant known under the code-name 'The Round Table', after the Iconian supergateway that Starfleet had previously used had become untenable. Since returning, Starfleet had given him and his crew a month's shoreleave before issuing any new orders; an extended period to be sure, but Starfleet's personnel and command officers noted that it was more than reasonable considering the crew's extended - if cut short - stay in the other side of the galaxy. Many of the crew had returned home to visit friends and family, and only a few had remained onboard, living around the work of the Maintenance Yard engineers.

The Iapetus had been put into service about five and a half years previously, and throughout that time had seen a lot of wear and tear through normal operational use. As such, Starfleet had decided that whilst the crew were on leave, they would station the ship here in the Alpha Centauri system to allow the yard engineers to perform some much-needed maintenance of her systems, resupply the ship with non-replicable materials such as gel packs, and upgrade a number of the ship's systems. As the Luna class was a testbed for a number of scientific systems, the problems being identified and resolved by other members of the fleet of sixteen ships were constantly improving the reliability and versatility of these systems, and needed to be periodically matched up with each other. The ship had also received upgrades to the holographic and medical systems, as well as a slew of other, less readily apparent upgrades. Vorn was looking forward to getting back aboard and seeing what was new.

For now, he looked down at the PADD he held in his hand. Commander Jordan Gunning had been a serving member of the Iapetus for a number of years, after joining as a lieutenant to head up the ship's security department. Last week, he had been offered a position aboard another starship, the Bonaventure as its executive officer; and Krace had just authorised the transfer with a wistful sense of loss. He knew as well as any captain that none of his officers would remain under his command forever, especially not as they progressed up the ranks and transitioned more towards the command track, but it was never a pleasant experience to lose an officer who he counted as a friend to another captain. In Gunning's place, he had appointed Commander Archer as the ship's new second officer and chief of security, deciding to request permission from Starfleet Intelligence to transfer her to the security division whilst still maintaining her status as the ship's liaison with SFI, and he had received a rather prompt approval response from them. It would certainly be a more active role than the one she was used to, but when he had informed her of the decision, he had been comforted by the knowledge that such a competent and known individual would be filling the second most important role on his crew, after his right hand officer.

Other transfers he had authorised had come in spats throughout the crew's shoreleave. Commander Drex had left the ship, with Lieutenant Cohen transferring from Operations to take his place in Engineering, and Counsellor Lynn had also been transferred; to Vorn's knowledge she was now serving at Starfleet Medical's headquarters on Earth. They had also dropped off Ensign Thryskal, who was still undergoing debriefing and check-ups following the incident involving the USS Mjolnir's destruction, his survival and his sudden relocation to the Delta Quadrant.

All in all, there had been many changes aboard the ship, and Vorn was sure that more were to come, but the fact that they were back in home territory, despite not likely to get many chances for real exploration for a while, filled him with a solid sense of hope and a feeling that this was a new beginning for him and his crew. He only hoped that the recent tendency for things to continually get worse for the powers in this quadrant had come to an end.