The First Course
Posted on Sun Aug 23rd, 2026 @ 5:50pm by Ensign Auren & Lieutenant JG Ash Rowe
1,452 words; about a 7 minute read
Mission:
Crisis at Zeta-294
Location: Deck 5, Chief Flight Control Officer's Quarters
Timeline: MD 2
Feeling a little overwhelmed internally, Auren wandered Deck 5, reading the little name plates on the doors as he passed the various offices. On the outside, he appeared quite steady and relaxed, but inside he could feel his stomach doing somersaults. The same kind of feeling he got when trying to pull off a risky manuever with his squadron back at the Academy. Except not the good kind, the fun kind, where his pulse would race and the universe would narrow to just him, the controls, the hum of the engines.
This was more like the feeling before one of the dreaded exams about ethics or diplomacy which Auren usually had scored pretty low on. Or when he'd been called into the Superintendent's office for a dressing down after the prank he and his squad pulled in sneaking a breeding pair of Tribbles into her private quarters (and he still hadn't figured out how they'd been found out to this day!) which turned into a a couple hundred by the end of the shift.
There it was. Chief Flight Control Officer's Office. The computer had told him he'd find her here. Would he be interrputing paperwork maybe? Should he have set an appointment? For a moment, he hesitated outside the door.
It was time to meet his boss. His new boss. His first boss. The lady who could make of break his career, according to all the scuttlebutt back at the Academy. Auren's thoughts often went there, back to San Francisco, considering he'd only just graduated. Logically, he knew that the cadets wouldn't know what they were talking about exactly, but everyone had said you had better impress your first CO right out of dock, or you were doomed to wind up on some backwater listening posts tracking comets and pacing holes in duranium from the boredom.
Auren swallowed hard, took a deep breath, put on a smile, checked to make sure his boots were still polished and his commbadge was on straight, and pressed the door chime to announce himself.
"Come in!" Ash Rowe called out from inside the office, sitting on the desk. In truth, she didn't really spend often in it. Not if she could avoid it at least. But there was a bit of 'her' in the room. A painting of a beach on the wall. A couple of models on a shelf. She looked up when she saw the new guy enter, grinning as she let her PADD lower to her lap. "Hey, there you are."
The smile immediately put him at ease; his stomach settled, his own grin grew, and he stepped inside the office, completely forgetting the worry from a moment before. Surely this was going to go just fine! Just like that his nerves were fine, his shoulders relaxed a few centimeters, and the tension just vanished from his posture. "Hi, Lieutenant," he said, relaxing. "Name's Auren, reporting for duty and all that. It's really great to meet you!"
"And you, Ensign Auren, I'm Lieutenant Rowe, if you didn't already know," she hopped up from the desk, moving to take a proper seat so he could take the one opposite her. "Come and sit down, tell me about yourself."
Auren slid into the chair, almost slouched in it in fact. "Yep, I looked up your file when I got my orders, wanted to see who the boss was going to be," he confirmed. "I don't know if there's much about me. Just graduated, Class of '95. I love to fly, but that's probably what everyone in Flight Control says. Honors in astrophysics, and played on the Velocity team all the way through. And that's probably all in my file, come to think of it." He wasn't sure what else he might say.
"Pretty much," Ash confirmed, laughing softly, clearly not bothered by the fact. "So...why don't you tell me something that's *not* in your file?" she challenged.
"Hmm..." Auren thought a moment, trying to come up with something good. He had this one thing he liked to do. "Favorite sport. You ever been ion surfing? You get these big, big boards, much bigger than a surf board for an ocean, put on an EVA suit, and go ride the engine wake of a ship's impulse drive. It gets wild." Auren looked excited just talking about it, more animated than he'd been so far; this was something definitely close to his heart.
"Even with a head's up display in your helmet, there's only a few seconds to react to how the particle waves shift. You gotta be fast, have good reflexes and strength, and a whole lot of luck, not to get tossed around hard. Other than flying a ship, it's the most exciting thing I've ever done." Broken bones were common enough and he'd had more than his fair share, people had even died fooling around with it a few times, especially when doing solar ion surfing, using a star's wind instead of a ship's wake.
"Now that sounds like a good time," Ash had to admit, laughing softly as she tucked her hands behind her head, imagining it. "I'll have to try it out on the holodeck, get ready to tackle the real thing on our next shoreleave." It wasn't even a matter of maybe.
"Really?" Auren blinked in surprise, and then his face lit up with a wide, excited smile. It might have been the most animated he had been since walking into Ash's office. "Oh, you are going to love it!" His French accent thickened with his excitement, and he began gesturing with both hands as he spoke, demonstrating the movements. "I would be happy to help, if you want. It can be dangerous. Sometimes you get whipped around so hard you black out. Better to begin on ze holodeck, oui? Practice with safeties first. There is nothing else like it. When you catch ze perfect ion wave..." He spread his hands as though riding one himself. "Mon Dieu... it is just you against the universe."
"That feeling's why I started racing...and then started flying..." Ash admitted openly with a big shrug and a warm smile. "Besides, I'll always try everything one. Maybe not twice...but at least once..."
He nodded, still smiling, happy to have made that kind of connection with his first chief. They probably weren't unique among pilots when it came to that rush, that feeling one got balancing the razor's edge between daring and control, but it did help to make him feel more at home.
"Curious to know, Lieutenant, what kind of duties will I be doing?" he shifted back towards the job given that opening about flying.
"You'll join the pilot shift rotation," Ash nodded slowly as she sat back, her seat swinging around slightly as she pulled her mind back to work. "And the regular training regime. And of course, you'll be on call for shuttle away missions."
His eyes lit up with joy and his smile was expectant. Shift rotations...on the bridge? Already? "Yes ma'am!" Auren said with a laugh. "Sounds good to me!"
"I run regular training. I know we all come out of the Academy hot on the helm, but there's so much out there and everything can go to hell in a hand basket. We train to let the muscle memory take over," Ash shrugged lightly, knowing pilots could be pretty split on training.
"That is perfect," Auren said, so pleased by all this. He had gotten his accent back under control now. "The more I know the better. You won't get any complaint." He looked so relaxed in his chair now, despite the enthusiasm, as if he had no worries at all. "Is there anything I should know ahead of time before my first duty shift?"
"We'll get you on the holodeck before, so you can get your hands on the real thing before...well...you get your hands on the real thing," Ash chuckled, reaching for a PADD to get him booked in. "Your first shift will be as the relief, so you can get a feel for things."
"Aye, Lieutenant," he said happily. "I admit, was a bit nervous before coming in here, but I think that's all gone now. Thank you. Everything is just about perfect." Sure, as a junior officer he had to share quarters, that was probably going to be a pain at times. But other than that? Auren couldn't think of anything else that could be better right now.
How he had gotten so lucky, he still didn't know.
Lieutenant JG Ash Rowe
Chief Flight Control Officer
Ensign Auren
Flight Control Officer
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