A/N: Happy Tom Paris Day! The prompt I used for this was "Tom covers a shift in the big chair" and so I took that and turned it into his FIRST shift in command. I wrote this at midnight last night and I haven't even gone through and re-read it yet so I guarantee there are some errors but just don't take it too seriously. :)
The big chair. Center seat. The silver throne. Why had I agreed to do this again? Sure, I'd wanted to impress everyone, show them that I was good at more than just steering a giant starship with a crew compliment of 153. I wanted to prove that even without any formal command training, I could do anything that the captain asked. A Tom of all trades, if you will. How hard could it be? I'd watched my friends and fellow crewmates take command plenty of times… and sat through quite a few boring shifts of nothing but silence. It was going to be Gamma shift anyways. I'd checked the star chart probably a thousand times; there weren't any Class M planets for lightyears and the nearest space station was already far behind us. There was nothing to be worried about, really. Just a boring old duty shift. The captain's seat was just another workstation, another chair.
It certainly didn't seem like that when I stepped off the turbolift. Only a few members of the crew glanced up as I entered, regarding me with stiff nods and maybe a tired smile. I'd caught the end of the Beta shift, but Chakotay looked relieved that I'd shown up a couple of minutes later. Maybe he was glad to be able to get sleep, maybe it was because he didn't expect me to be as eager to take the reigns as I hope I appeared to be. He offered neither words of support nor a gesture of good luck, but I didn't need it. The ship's first officer exited the bridge as silently as I had entered it, leaving me and empty seat to fill.
It was as I was running my fingers along the back of the chair that I realized I was being watched by a crewman at ops. Without further hesitation, I sheepishly sunk into the command station. I thought it would make me feel different, more powerful or something. It wasn't like I hadn't slipped into the position before; sometimes when Harry was playing captain I swapped positions just to say I'd been there.
The Beta shift came to a full close and the swishing of the turbolift doors brought the brave members of the 'graveyard' shift. I so rarely worked at such late hour that I wasn't really on friendly terms with many of the new crew, although of course I'd seen them all in passing at some time or another. I was responsible for all of them now, I realized. I was responsible for everyone. Yikes. My prison buddies would never believe me.
I thought I should probably say something… establish myself. There was an odd sort of tension that filled the room, but I'd never been shy to breaking an awkward silence.
"Status report?" It was only after I said it that I realized I could've specified who I wanted to talk to. The truth was that I wasn't sure and even though I'd been on a million duty shifts before, all of the command details were sort of hazy. Taking the lead on a holodeck program with programmed responses was a lot different than the unpredictability of real people and real space. Obviously.
"On heading, minimal course adjustments may be required due to an asteroid field." The fill-in pilot responded first, turning around briefly to face me. I'd worked with her on a couple of occasions and although I didn't think she had the best instincts when it came to evasive maneuvers, she did a stand-up job. An asteroid field though? With this much time to make the adjustments, I figured that we'd be fine. Maybe I hadn't studied the map as closely as I'd thought, but that was ok. I was itching to get my fingers on the flight course. That wouldn't make a good showing, so I refrained myself. The main ops officer piped up next.
"All systems functioning within normal parameters." He reported dully, arms behind his back. I thought I saw something behind him… a PADD maybe? That wasn't really standard procedure but it WAS Gamma shift. Nothing ever happened; I'd probably do the same thing if I wasn't in the spotlight. In fact, I HAD done it before… although I'd never had the poor sense to get caught. I'd let the ops officer slide, there was no need to tarnish his record with a stupid thing like that. I'd make such a good captain, the crew would love me. Yeah, we'd have a blast. I was so lost in my daydream that I didn't hear the rest of the bridge crew chime in. It was only when the silence sunk in again that I realized my mistake. No big deal… I'd just change the topic. That was something captains did, right?
"We're in for a busy night." I snidely remarked, waiting for the laughter to start so I could throw something else in. It never came. Looking around, almost the entire bridge crew was staring at me with a mixture of anxiety and confusion. Seriously? "Take it easy, I'm just kidding around." It was like everyone let out their breath at once. Within a few moments, the crew returned to whatever it was that they'd been doing before. Tough crowd tonight. Without Harry and I's banter, the Gamma shift was almost… boring. Was this what it was like every night? Sheesh, who'd sign up for this? Peace and quiet? On this ship?
Apparently that was the way they liked it, because absolutely no communication was made for almost an entire hour. No small talk, no 'so, what'd you have for breakfast', no ship gossip. Nothing. It was only when the approaching asteroid field required a verbal announcement that any human sound was made.
"I hope you've got that course locked down." I hoped I sounded more confident than I felt. Although my station console showed the outline of the path we were set to made, it was without the usual markings that I was used to as the one actually driving.
"Of course, Sir." The pilot's tone carried irritation and I guess I didn't blame her. Captain Janeway would never question my flight path (unless something was SERIOUSLY wrong, but of course me being me, that was a seriously slim possibility). What gave me the right to question this course? Well, other than being the one in command. And a superior officer. And the fact that I was a better pilot. So I guess maybe it was a fair question, even if an unnecessary one. I'd just have to trust the pilot.
We could see the asteroids on the viewscreen. They were nothing special, really. Standard space rocks… or metal… or whatever they were. Pointless. They maybe would've been fun if I was out in the Delta Flyer, but as far as Voyager was concerned they were just an annoyance. We'd cleared a good deal of the field before I noticed anything. Voyager almost seemed to be slowing down. Thinking it might just be a part of the flight path (newer pilots often lacked confidence at high speeds) I didn't say a word about it.
"Sir, we're… losing speed." The pilot finally admitted, searching frantically for an answer. "This isn't supposed to be happening." Interesting. Assuming she was telling the truth (and what reason did she have to lie?) we might have a situation on our hands. Something to do.
"Speed?" We were about halfway through the asteroid field now; I thought maybe we'd be good to clear it.
"Warp 5.4 and slowing." The ops officer answered, sparing the pilot from further embarrassment. "Shall I sound an alert?"
"No!" I quickly replied, "Let's see if we can't fix this ourselves first." Surely it was nothing serious. Someone had probably sat on a console down in engineering, flipped some switch or something. There was no need to wake and worry the rest of the crew. Imagine how it would look… running into a serious alert on my first shift in the big chair. That was hardly something to brag about. I'd never admit it but as bored as I was, I had been hoping for smooth sailing. An 'easy A', so to speak. It didn't look like I was going to get that chance. No, this shift was going to be eventful whether we were ready for it or not.
"We're at a complete stop." Someone informed, although it wasn't really necessary. The whole ship shuddered, almost as if straining against something invisible. Then we were stuck. What did asteroid fields have against warp drive? They'd never given me any trouble before. There was a first for everything, as this shift was quickly proving.
"What happened?" Yes, the question that was on everyone's mind. The entire bridge crew looked toward the pilot, but she only gave a bewildered shrug.
"Scans reveal no ships in the vicinity." The security officer provided, to my own great relief. The absolute last thing I wanted to deal with was contact with an alien species; that would mean waking everyone which again, was the worst case scenario. I was determined to prove that we could handle this-whatever it was-ourselves.
"Could it be cloaked?" I pondered aloud, "Something had to do this." I was no scientist but there was no way plain old space rocks could just STOP an entire starship like that. No way.
"If it is, it isn't moving." Right. We could detect warp signatures or ghost images or something. Nothing was truly invisible. Except the cause to our problem. I stood up now, leaning in to get a closer look. I'd often snickered over the captain and first officer doing the same thing, but now I understood why. There was some imbedded belief that if we squinted hard enough, the answer was there. Right under our own noses.
"Engineering reports no damage to the warp core." The officer at ops was furiously typing away at his console, the PADD lying discarded on top of the long counter. I was just glad that B'Elanna wasn't working; I'd get an earful over that. The last thing she'd said to me before I'd left our room was a playful warning not to break the ship. I'd laughed it off then, but now that it was a real possibility… well, at least I hadn't made a bet on it. I could never live that down.
"Can we get an analysis on the asteroids?" Surely that wasn't too much to ask.
"We don't have any geologists, Sir."
"Well what DO we have?" I knew we had at least a handful of science officers, I'd seen them in the mess hall. Sure there was no head of the department but that didn't mean there weren't any. Right? Sam Wildman wore a blue shirt, what did she do? She'd told me once but sometimes I got all those '-ology' professions mixed up.
"Um…" The ops officer looked as though he was probably furiously scrolling through the crew compliment. "We have a vulcanologist."
"That's not helpful!" I snapped, irritated about the suggestion. For god's sake, why did we even need one of those?
"Sir, she studies volcanoes." Oh. OH.
"There's a Starfleet division for that?" I couldn't imagine it'd be extremely common. After all, we were a science ship but that wasn't typically the type of mission that Voyager was meant for. There were special survey teams for that, or something. I'd never been clear on the distinctions between different types of crews and ships. Everyone needed a pilot, so I'd never had to worry (or choose).
"She also focuses on seismology. You know, earthquakes?" It wasn't like I hadn't lived in San Francisco most of my life. I knew what a damn earthquake was. Biting back a snappy comment (I was quickly beginning to realize that more of a command presence rather than an easygoing one was more helpful in a situation like this), I sat back down in the captain's chair and tried to look like I knew what I was doing. The situation was all under control.
"Get her on the line." After a short discussion the sleep-deprived ensign agreed to investigate the asteroids. Although even she admitted that it wasn't directly her specialty, it was all that we had. We used Voyager's phaser array to cut off a small(ish) chunk of the rock and beamed it directly to the room in which the ensign was working. She promised quick results but gave no estimate on how much time those results would take. It was enough to make a guy sweat; what if everyone just woke up to a stalled ship? There'd be plenty of questions, including one about me not raising the alarm. It wasn't yet time to start getting TOO worried.
Almost two hours later, it was time to start getting worried. The bridge crew had passed the time by formulating hypotheses about things we knew nothing about and running countless scans of the environment. It was a great relief when the stand-in geologist finally called us back.
"Well…" She nervously started, "There's only one thing I can be certain about."
"What's that?" Why keep us waiting any longer?
"It's a rock." This elicited some laughter from the other bridge officers, but not me. I was in too serious of a mindset and anyways I was still somewhat bitter that they hadn't laughed at my joke earlier.
"Anything else?" I asked, wondering why we'd wasted two hours doing nothing. I should've known there wasn't going to be any real results, I'd walked right into-
"The asteroids are charged with some sort of energy. I can't determine whether it's a natural phenomenon or an artificial one." Of course that's what it was. There was always some sort of 'energy' or 'mysterious space cloud' getting in the way with our progress home. It excited the scientists but frustrated the pilots… but what else was new. "My only guess is that it's interfering with something within the ship. Sorry."
"No, that's great." It was all we had. "Thank you. Let us know if you find anything else." There wouldn't be anything else, but I didn't want her to go back to sleep in case we needed her again. After ending the communication I leaned back in the chair and gazed out the viewscreen. "Do we have impulse power?"
"Yes, Sir, I'll activate it now." The pilot did as she said and the ship slowly began to creep forward. It was so slow that I wouldn't have noticed any progress if I hadn't been paying attention. By the time we would clear the asteroid field, it'd be practically time for another Gamma shift. There had to be another option.
"What if we could prevent the asteroids from emitting energy?" I was met with blank looks. They were just as much scientists as I was. "All we have to do is coat the nearby asteroids with something and the energy won't be able to reach Voyager." It was a brilliant idea. I'd never heard of the technique before, but that didn't dissuade me. If it worked, I could be getting a new maneuver named after me. It was worth a shot.
"You want to spray paint the asteroids?" An officer at ops laughed, summarizing the idea. Those hadn't been my exact words but it was close enough to the mark.
"Sure, why not?" The pilot answered before I had the chance to. There were murmurs of agreement among the rest of the bridge crew. I quickly called the ensign working on the asteroid samples to inform her of our plan. She was less than impressed, maybe even a bit skeptical. But she didn't challenge my authority and was soon working to figure out what we could use to block the energy. She sent her results directly to ops; a good thing since I didn't really understand the compound she'd put together anyways.
The forward phaser cannons had to be reconfigured to include the 'coating'. Once all systems were ready, we shot a test fire at one of the smaller asteroids nearby. Everyone held their breaths as the wavering ball of yellow light departed the ship and traveled steadily towards the rock. Upon hitting the asteroid, the cannon flattened and broke apart. It wasn't the only thing. The asteroid almost immediately shattered into tiny pieces, sending chunks of dust and space rock our way. Of course they were no match for Voyager, but I could only hope that there wouldn't be any telling paint scratches. So what went wrong?
"Recalibrating phaser cannons…" The ops officer informed, "It looks like it was too powerful." I appreciated the explanation in layman's terms.
After a bit more fiddling around with the settings, we were ready for another test. That time, the cannon wasn't powerful enough and it looked to almost bounce right off the asteroid. The way things were going, it was looking like we were going to be there all shift. How hard could it be? I mean, it wasn't like I could do it, but these were trained professionals. Within half an hour, they seemed to think they had found the right balance. The cannon was launched and made contact with an asteroid. Nothing seemed to happen. Another failure? Just when we'd started to give up hope, the asteroid flickered yellow and began emitting some sort of glow.
"What's that?" I asked, voicing the question that was probably on everyone's minds.
"We've created some sort of barrier against the energy." Someone said. So it worked, then? There was no time to lose.
"Light up every asteroid in out path."
"Yes, Sir." Within minutes, most of the space rocks around the ship had been dealt with. "The warp core is coming back online." That was the best news I'd heard all shift. Voyager began to slowly ease forward, still shooting at the remaining asteroids in the way. The pilot worked furiously to find a path of least resistance while the security officer targeted the rocks. We made a pretty good team. And all under my leadership. Don't think I was trying to take all the credit, but I thought I did deserve a large pat on the back. After all, I hadn't crumbled under the pressure.
When we finally cleared the field, the ship was able to return to its normal speed and everything was quickly set back to the way it was before we'd made modifications. I made promises to celebrate in the mess hall with the other officers- at a later time of course. The stress had left us all exhausted and ready to go off-shift. Unfortunately we still quite a few more hours before the Alpha shift began, but thankfully it passed without further incident. In fact, hearing the turbolift doors open startled me; I had lost track of time and wasn't expecting any visitors for what I'd thought was a while longer.
"Good morning, Mr. Paris." Janeway cheerfully regarded me with a large smile as I scrambled up out of the chair. "How did it go?"
"Great!" I blinked, hoping she wouldn't catch me in a half-truth. "It was no problem."
"I look forward to reading your report."
"Report?" What report? If I'd known there was going to be extra writing involved, I would've given the position a second thought. Maybe even a third thought.
"You don't expect Starfleet to give us a geologist without written reason to have one?" I stood there in stunned silence. How did she know? Already? It was too early for any gossip to have slipped out and I'd had the volcanologist working all shift; there was no way she would've had time to say anything. You know what? I didn't want to know how she did it. She was the captain; I supposed she just had ways of finding out. All this time I'd thought I was constructing some great secret…
"Right." I nodded, stepping towards the door to avoid any further admissions, "I'll get right on that."
"Tom," She stopped me right before I got to the turbolift. "Get some rest first. I don't need it right away." It was one of the few times I'd ever had the captain 'go easy on me'. I wondered if it was related to the asteroid incident or if I really looked that worn-down.
"Yes Ma'am." The doors closed between us, enclosing me in the lift. I sunk against the wall, the full weight of the shift finally starting to settle down. It'd been stressful, but I'd gotten the ship through it. Me. Acting captain. Shift leader. Whatever you wanted to call it. One thing was for sure: I wasn't going to be signing up for command school any time soon. Leave the silver thrones to those who needed to be in control, needed to have their hands on every station. Me? Being a pilot suited me just fine.
Although…
If Janeway asked me to pick up another Gamma shift, I wouldn't have to think about it. I'd jump right back into the big chair.