An Officer and a... The Journal of Charles Alestone

[Alestone]

Personal Log: 822/01/24

Charles Alestone sprawled in the seat of the Command console. It wasn't often these days that he got to ride the bridge of a warship, even one so dainty as Sleipnir. Technically, he was her CO, and he had the right to this chair any time he wanted it. Practically, Sandra Steel, his Executive Officer on the Table of Organization, was the captain the majority of the time.

While it wasn't quite a fiction, the sad truth was that Chuck didn't have time to captain the ship with his Naval Architect duties with Star Enterprises. For a company that didn't build ships, Chuck spent an enormous amount of time drawing blue prints and figuring out other peoples' notions of how ships went together. Installation of a jump drive or cloak almost always had some unexpected element where people had "gone off the map" of the ship's original design.

What all that really meant was that times like this, where Sleipnir was doing a survey of the Omega 3 Baxter anomaly, were precious moments when Commander Alestone got to indulge his first love, command of a warship.

His wool gathering was interrupted by the pleasant alto of the ship's computer announcing, "Warning, Radiation Hazard detected."

he looked up and discovered that the anomaly sitting almost touching distance in front of the bow. Taking a moment to compose his surprise, he said calmly, "Back us off a bit, Jennifer. No point in putting unnecessary stress on the shields."



Jennifer Wayland, the Pilot/Astrogator, started the ship into a slow reverse. "Copy that, skipper."

Five minutes later, Sandra, standing duty at the Tactical station, barked, "Incoming ship, Corsair Praefect class."

Chuck nodded, almost as if he had expected it. "Let's keep it mellow. Star and the Empire are on good terms, even if we prefer not to advertise the fact."

After the requisite courtesies, the Corsair captain asked what he was seeing, then went on his way, apparently hunting some Junker.

The scanners, including the MK II Hyperspace rig that was Sleipnir's reason for being, had been gathering data for several hours when the computer identified a pattern of flares. Chuck had missed the last routine survey, four months ago, so he turned to the Electronics/Communications officer, Jeremy Falstaff. "Was there anything like this in the last data?"



Jeremy immediately shook his head. "No way, skipper. We would have brought something like this to your attention." He turned back to his console when it pinged, then looked back Chuck. "According to the computer, we should be able to determine how long this has been going on when we get back to Star. Our hardware recognizes that there is a reduction happening in the pattern of the flares, but we don't have the right kind of software for this job."

Chuck thought on that for a second, then looked at both Sandra and Jeremy. "Do we have everything else we came for this trip?"

At their curt nods, Chuck nodded to Jennifer. "Take us home, please."